


Change the World, Change Ourselves

by PyrrhaIphis



Series: Freelance Journalist [1]
Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: 1980s Language, Discussion of Homophobia, Getting Together, M/M, Stealth Crossover, The infamous foul mouth of Curt Wild, discussion of stalking and sexual assault, mending friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 79,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24199102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyrrhaIphis/pseuds/PyrrhaIphis
Summary: In the wake of a violent attack at a Curt Wild concert, Arthur Stuart quits his job at the Herald.  He ends his final piece for the Herald (a first-hand, stream-of-consciousness column about the attack) with a plea to Brian Slade to contact Curt and ease his suffering.  Arthur, of course, is also on hand to help Curt get through this tough time, but the more time passes, the more he wishes he hadn't quit his job after all, because there's so much about the attack that no one is writing about...(I was really hesitant to post this, for obvious reasons, but it's the start of a series, and I'm dying to post the second part, so I had to post it.  I'll put up a summary (in a Google doc or something) of this along with part two for anyone who would be triggered by discussions of mass shootings.)
Relationships: Arthur Stuart/Curt Wild
Series: Freelance Journalist [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1816195
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I will apologize right from the start that the trauma Curt suffers in this work is not realistic. I tried to come up with how it seemed to me he would react to being the victim of such an attack, and *then* I did my research on trauma and PTSD. (It doesn't qualify as PTSD, however, as that is over a longer period of time.) It's not that it's inconsistent with how trauma was described as manifesting, as such, it's just...I don't know. Part of me feels like it's somehow a bit flippant or something. (The fact that he's basically fine while he's still in the hospital and only starts undergoing the traumatic reaction upon returning to his apartment is probably part of the problem I have with it, but I couldn't really find a way to rewrite the early chapters without utterly trashing the story.) I actually tried to post this once before (under a different title) and deleted it before 24 hours had passed, because I was so uncomfortable with the idea of putting it out there. I think I only have enough strength to post it now because the COVID global shutdown has meant that there can't have been any mass shootings in months, because there haven't been any mass gatherings in months.
> 
> Anyway, if anyone's still reading after that note, as always I ask that any inappropriate Americanisms from British characters please be pointed out to me so I can fix them.

**Blood on the Stage:**

**A Survivor Works Through the Terror**

As a journalist, you begin to think, after a while, that you have become desensitized to violence. You think there’s nothing left about man’s inhumanity to man that can surprise you. You’ve seen it all, you’ve read all the witnesses’ testimony, seen all the photographs too disturbing to be printed, maybe you’ve been to the site of the slaughter, with bloodstains and chalk outlines still in place, perhaps even a few body bags. You think nothing can still shock you, that as a journalist you’ve become removed, no longer a part of things, no longer shakable, no longer subject to the same fears as everyone else.

Then the day comes that you witness it for yourself, and all that calm, cool reserve is gone. And maybe it isn’t coming back.

I know mine will never return; I cannot go back to who I was yesterday. So this is not merely a personal op-ed piece, but also my printed letter of resignation, delivered to New York at large, though I acknowledge freely that the city does not care if one English immigrant quits his job or stays there the rest of his insignificant life.

But I’m not quite ready to write about what happened in Central Park. My hands start shaking when I try to type the words. Indulge me, if you will, as I share a little background information. Build up my mental fortitude. Explain why this was personal for me in a way that it was not for so many others who were at the concert.

Ten years ago—ten years and six months, in fact, almost to the day—I was at another concert that was interrupted by gunfire. But everything was different that day. I went on living my life as normal, and so did the only victim of the shooting.

The alleged shooting. The feigned shooting.

The anniversary went almost unrecognized here in the United States, but I have heard from my friends back home that it was suitably sneered at in London. Sneered in public, mourned in private. It was that kind of anniversary.

February 5th, 1974, seemed to us on the day as one that would live in infamy, if you will forgive my borrowing a phrase from a much more serious and genuine tragedy. In a way, it _did_ earn a lifetime of infamy, but not the infamy we expected at the time. America never took to glam rock the way Britain did, but it effectively died on that day ten years ago, when a lone gunman took aim at Brian Slade, glam’s “patron saint,” and fired. Brian fell in a flurry of white feathers, seeming to all of us as lifeless as the stars.

I saw the gunman. I was right down front, and I saw him.

What I saw on the gunman’s face was…nothing. No emotion. I told the police at the time—not that they cared—that I thought he must have been a contract killer. It was evident on his face that he was just doing his job. He even tipped his hat at the “corpse” before he left. Which should have tipped me off as to just who had hired him. But I was a child—in mind if not in body—and I was crushed because I thought I had seen my idol murdered before my eyes. And yet, how soon did I get over it? How soon did life continue on as it always had?

Within days of Brian’s alleged death, conservative pundits were saying that he had gotten what he had deserved. Brian Slade had made it fashionable to be bisexual, and his well-publicized affair with Curt Wild had made it clear to the world that he wasn’t merely playing at being bisexual. All those voices of outrage that had called for him to leave the stage, and had cheered at his being forcibly removed from it, they thought he was luring innocent teens into “sin” and “depravity” because it had become popular among Brian’s fans to claim to be bisexual.

But, as Curt said at the time, you can’t fake being gay. There were two types who called themselves bisexuals during Brian’s brief reign at the top of pop. There were those who just wanted to seem cool, and had no intention of ever having gay sex—the ones who couldn’t fake it and who mostly never even tried. And then there were the rest of us, who called ourselves bisexual because Brian had given us the courage to admit we weren’t straight. I don’t know how many were actually bisexual and how many were like me, afraid to tell the world I was gay, because I was sure the world would hate me for it, but convinced that if I was like Brian (and I so wanted to be like Brian in everything!) then the world would accept me, even when they saw that I liked men.

The pundits who hated Brian for “perverting” teens had no reason to; no one was becoming gay or even bisexual who wasn’t that way already. All he had given us was the courage to admit who and what we already were.

When the truth came out that Brian had hired that man to fire a blank at him, that he was alive and well—as well as he could be when he was living in hiding and wallowing in cocaine all day—those same conservative pundits soon hit on a new way to denigrate both him and us. They claimed that everything about him had been an act. That he had never been bisexual, that he and Curt had never been lovers, that everything about Brian Slade was as fake as his death.

This paper had planned an article about the anniversary of that so-called shooting stunt. I conducted hours of interviews with his ex-wife and one of his former managers. I even managed to share a few words with Curt. I feel sure now that it wasn’t a stunt. Brian was having a nervous breakdown, unable to cope with the sudden and harsh end of his affair with Curt, and he lashed out in the only way he could, inflicting his own hurt on everyone else. It’s not an uncommon reaction to a painful break-up, but because of his celebrity, he was able to play it out on a scale most people could never dream of.

Maybe it was something of the theatricality of it that had kept it from affecting me as much as it should have at the time. Maybe it was the way Brian had stopped without breaking out into song, looking straight at the “assassin” as if petulantly awaiting a late line in a stage play. Maybe something deep inside me recognized that I hadn’t seen a real death, even if my conscious mind didn’t recognize that yet.

Nothing I say now can make you understand how much Brian and Curt had meant to me, not unless you’re a rare soul who lived a similar life to mine. I ran away from home at 17, because my father had found out I was gay. It was because of Brian and Curt and their love for each other that he found out, but it was also because of them that I knew I was not broken to be attracted to other men. I ran straight to London—about a seven hour bus ride, as I couldn’t even afford a train ticket, if you can believe it—and did all I could to enter their world. I was lucky enough to find a position as a hanger-on for a lesser band, and lucky enough that the band was fond enough of me to buy me stylish clothes to wear while I carried their equipment and cleaned their apartment. I was lucky enough that they were friends and lovers as well as employers. I could have ended up dead in a ditch so easily that it used to keep me up nights worrying about what could have gone wrong, all the ways I could have snuffed it.

Those worries are as nothing now.

I’ve seen real death. I was nearly part of that death. And I saw the gunman’s face. I saw the hate there. The bloodlust. The pleasure he found in killing us.

I’ve already heard one conservative mouthpiece on NPR calling him a hero instead of a monster. Claiming that he took that military-grade machine gun and opened fire on an outdoor rock concert because we were all “faggots” and the world was better off without us.

I doubt if any of the people he killed were gay.

This wasn’t an event connected with the New York Pride Parade. Pride is in June. It’s been over for two months. Yes, the festival this weekend was a fundraiser for AIDS research. But that doesn’t mean everyone in the audience was gay. AIDS affects everyone; straight people have died, too, even if the numbers aren’t as large. Yes, the performer who was on stage is gay, though he usually calls himself bisexual. But not all his fans are. Most of them probably aren’t. And no matter what the fundraiser was for, the crowd was there for the performances, not for the charity.

The first shots were fired towards the back of the crowd, where the latecomers and the people who couldn’t afford tickets were standing. The noise, the screams…I don’t know when they’ll stop ringing in my ears.

As I turned to look at him, that maniac swung his weapon across the whole audience, bringing death closer towards the stage. A woman standing not two feet from me was shot. I felt her blood strike my face. I can still feel it there, even though it’s long since been washed off. I’m told she may live. Perhaps if she does, the feeling of her blood will fade.

The sound of a guitar splintering almost killed me.

I was running for the stage when everyone else was panicking, running away, not sure where to run, just so long as it was away. But I couldn’t. I had done nothing when I had thought one of my idols was shot down before me. That had worked out, because it had been fake. This wasn’t fake. This was brutally, desperately real, and I couldn’t let my other idol—my most precious idol—be shot down without doing anything.

I don’t know if it was Curt’s guitar that had splintered. Everything is fuzzy in my mind.

Curt was wounded; the bullet struck him the upper arm, passing through flesh and bone and coming out the other side. He was lying on the stage, barely conscious, groaning in agony. If he hadn’t been, if I hadn’t been sure he was alive, something might have snapped in me. I covered him with my body, so the madman couldn’t shoot him again. When the shooting had stopped and I heard the police sirens, I did what I could to apply a tourniquet, in case the ambulance was late to get there. But I don’t know what would have happened if those few, brave audience members hadn’t tackled the shooter. I don’t know what would have happened if he had gotten away from them—or killed them—before the police got there. I don’t know how many more he could have killed before he ran out of bullets. I don’t know if I would still be alive to write these words.

If you’re reading these words, Brian, and I’m sure that you are, don’t let _her_ tell you it’s nothing. I’m sure she was very instrumental in you breaking your cocaine addiction, and I’m grateful to her for that. I don’t doubt she’s been very helpful in your new life, but I know she never cared for your relationship with Curt. I’ll bet she’s been poisoning you against him ever since she finally got you all to herself. Don’t listen. For once, don’t listen. Curt almost died. He could have died so easily. All of us could have. I don’t expect you to get back together with him. I don’t even want you to. But he’s been suffering for years—maybe all ten of them—because of you, and now he’s suffering physically as well. Make up with him enough to be friends. Use your money and influence—yes, I know you have influence again—to help the world understand that men like Curt and I aren’t monsters. That the men who would murder us are the monsters. That while you’re not quite like us, you’re nothing like them, either. Please. For Curt.

***

Shannon lowered the newspaper, unsure what to do about it. The last thing she had expected was a direct appeal to Tommy. Particularly not one explicitly attacking _her_.

She glanced over at the door to his bedroom. He had been pacing in there all day, and half the day yesterday…he’d probably been pacing all night, too, but she had fallen asleep on the sofa, unable to keep up the vigil overnight. Every once in a while, the sound would come back up on the television in his room, as he found another news story about the attack. The phone had only rung once in all that time. All Mandy had said was “Let me speak to him.” But Shannon had been given orders that he didn’t want to talk to anyone, and when she explained that, Mandy had hung up without another word. She was probably at the hospital now. She’d probably been at the hospital when she called. Mandy and Curt would be much better off with each other, but if this article was accurate, maybe Curt was never going to be interested in Mandy. Well, that was his loss. Or her loss. It was someone’s loss. Or not a loss. Shannon was too worn out at this point to care.

The sound on the television came on again for a moment, then went off again in a hiss. “Bloody barbarians!” Not quite Tommy’s voice, but not quite Brian’s either. He seemed to be stuck halfway, ever since the attack. It was probably the shock.

Uneasily, Shannon went to the doorframe, and knocked on it. Tommy had sat down on the end of the bed, and was glaring at the blank screen of the television. The hate and the fatigue made him look so much older. “Um…” A helplessness washed over her like she hadn’t felt in years.

“What is it?” He didn’t look at her.

“This newspaper…ah…one of their reporters was there. He…his column about the attack addresses you personally.”

That made him look at her. “Why would they address Tommy Stone?”

Shannon shook her head. She couldn’t answer in words.

A look of pain crossed his face. “Let me see it.”

She brought him the newspaper, and stood by his side as he read the whole column. His hands were shaking by the time he lowered it again. “He sounds like he wants Curt for himself.”

“He does sound that way,” she agreed. But was that really all he took away from that?

“Have you been poisoning my mind?”

“I don’t think so.”

Tommy sighed. “What’s the circulation of this newspaper?”

“It’s not very large. Comparatively speaking.” Even a newspaper with a small circulation in New York City could and probably did reach several hundred thousand people.

“How long will it take other newspapers to repeat what he’s said here, if they’re going to?”

Shannon bit her lip. “If you respond to him in any way, they’ll know,” she said quietly. “Even if they don’t repeat it, they’ll all have read it. He just outed himself to the world. Even if no one else cares, the rest of the media will have memorized every word of it. They’ll all be talking about whether to give him an award or throw him out of the press club. And they’ll all be holding their breath, waiting to see if Brian Slade answers his plea.”

“I suppose so.” He set the paper down on the bed beside him. “Give me the telephone. And Mandy’s number.”


	2. Chapter 2

It had been Curt who had talked Mandy down, actually. She’d come back to Curt’s room seeing red, and it was Curt who had convinced her not to blame Shannon for doing her job. Maybe Curt still felt sorry for Shannon after all this time. Maybe he didn’t even want Brian back in his life. They were both better off without Brian, after all. Weren’t they?

Yesterday afternoon, when Mandy arrived, the room had been thick with reporters and TV cameras. Mandy had almost been thrown out for not having a press pass, even. But one by one, they had left and not come back. Mandy hadn’t left for more than a few minutes. Just to make a phone call or nip out for a cigarette. (Though Curt had cursed her out for it when she came back, for daring to smell like nicotine when he was forbidden from smoking by the doctors and nurses providing his pain medication.) Two of the Rats had been in and out all day, going back and forth between Curt’s room and the drummer’s. None of Curt’s other friends had shown up, though a few had called. And _they_ had an excuse for not coming to visit him in the hospital, because they were calling from London or Berlin. Or Hokkaido. Mandy wasn’t sure _what_ Jack was doing in Hokkaido, but she hadn’t heard anything of him in at least five years, so it was just nice to know he was still alive.

So by the time the nurse stopped in to tell Mandy that visiting hours would be ending soon (which had gotten her flipped off by both Mandy _and_ Curt), they’d been alone for hours, and Mandy was running out of things to talk about without mentioning Brian. They didn’t have that much in common, really, other than Brian. Well, and Jack, but how much was there to talk about a man who made being mysterious one of his most defining features? Even someone like Curt, who had spent more than a year working with him, never really got to know him very well. Mandy didn’t want to leave Curt alone with his pain—she knew all too well how busy a crowded city hospital could get, and how long that meant Curt would have to wait for his next dose of pain medication if he relied on the nurses remembering to bring it—but it was awkward, sitting there in silence.

All there was to read in the room was a copy of every single newspaper in New York City, and a smattering of ones from out of town. One of the Rats had brought them in. Every single paper that talked about the attack. Mandy had only glanced at the headlines of most of them. She didn’t want to read about it. Too many of them mentioned Brian. One of them even had the gall to suggest that this was another trick like Brian’s ‘death’ had been. A dozen innocent people dead, and that _asshole_ dared to think it was all a big joke?

Mostly, Mandy had been reading the other parts of the papers. The parts that pretended life was the same the day after a mass shooting. Movie reviews. Celebrity gossip. Broadway rumors. Even the funny papers. After looking at the music section in a couple of the papers, she avoided it in the rest; that was the one place where articles about Brian were most likely to crop up. As far as Mandy could tell, Curt was re-reading about half a dozen articles with an almost obsessive mania. That or he was so zonked on pain meds that he didn’t realize he’d already read them. With Curt, either one was plausible.

They had maybe ten minutes of visiting hours left when someone knocked on the door. Mandy assumed it was a particularly polite or shy nurse, and ignored it. The odd thing was, the door didn’t open. And then the person knocked again.

Lowering the paper revealed that Curt seemed to be napping, so Mandy quickly made her way over to the door and opened it just a crack, planning on sending away the person on the other side, no matter who it was. To her surprise, it wasn’t a nurse or a doctor or a well-wisher: it was that reporter who had come around six months ago looking for Brian. (She couldn’t remember his name at this point, only for some reason she had it in her head that it was a girl’s name.)

Mandy was just starting her no-more-reporters line when she noticed Brian’s green pin sparkling at the neck of his shirt. She shut her mouth again, and stepped out into the hall, even though she had to push him backwards—all six feet of him giving way with surprisingly little resistance—to do so. “Just what’s going on here?” she asked, poking him in the chest just below the pin. “How _dare_ you wear that here right now? Do you even know what that _is_? How did you even _get_ it?!”

“Uh…well…Curt…”

Mandy scowled, then a sudden wave of realization washed over her. “Wait, all those accounts of the attack said that it was a reporter who used his own body to shield Curt when the bullets were still flying. That…was that you?”

Sheepishly, he nodded.

Honestly, Mandy hadn’t thought she could get more disgusted, but evidently she could. “And _all_ those accounts just _happened_ not to mention that the reporter was also Curt’s boyfriend?” she surmised.

He turned beet red, and shook his head weakly. “I’m not—I…I think I’d…I mean, all this has really made me…understand that…I…um…want to be…but…no, I’m not…we’re not…”

Mandy sighed. “So…what? He asked you out and when you said you were straight he gave you that as an in-case-you-change-your-mind present?”

That at least elicited a weak chuckle. “No, it wasn’t like that at all.”

“Well, what _was_ it like? Tell me **_exactly_** what it was like.”

Despite a certain amount of nervous stammering and what appeared to be a pathological inability to look in her eyes as he was speaking, he did eventually manage to relay the exact conversation he and Curt had had about the pin, and how it had come to his possession. And dropping it in his beer while he wasn’t looking did seem like a very Curt thing to do. But still… “I just can’t believe he’d just give it to you like that without any… _anything_. Did you even—was anything even said about whether or not you like men?”

He shook his head. “No, but…um…well…I was sorta…hoping maybe…he remembered me…”

“Oh? Fucked him before, have you?”

Studiously examining his shoes, he nodded.

Mandy sighed. “Well, that’s something, at least. Just when was it?”

He laughed uncomfortably, and looked back up at her face with a nervous but rather charming smile. “Right after that same concert where you saw Brian,” he said. “And you were wrong. I saw him, too.”

“Oh really.” Mandy wasn’t buying that. Not at all. “And how did you happen to see him?”

But he nodded, looking surprisingly confident. “Because you saw him. I was standin’ as close to you as I am now. Only of course you didn’t notice me. I was just another groupie backstage, looking just like everyone else.” He glanced over her shoulder at the door to the hospital room. “You did notice me for a moment after the performance, though,” he added. “After you lied to Curt and told him you hadn’t seen Brian. I’d been lurking…hoping to talk to him, and…” He cleared his throat.

Mandy sighed. There _had_ been a kid dressed kind of like Brian listening in on their conversation…was that really this gangly lout? Hard to imagine… “So,” she eventually sighed, deciding it wasn’t worth trying to disentangle how much of his story was true and how much was bullshit, “why are you here now? Hoping for a reward for saving him?” Though given that this man hadn’t been shot, Curt would obviously not have been shot, either. For that matter, from a weapon that powerful, the bullets would probably have gone straight through both of them.

“I just want to see him.”

There was still a lot about his story that Mandy didn’t believe, but he looked so earnest that it was hard to say so. So she let him in.

Curt was awake now, sitting up in bed, and he broke out into a big grin when he saw the new arrival. “Arthur!” (At least that explained the name thing. Now Mandy could remember it: his accent made “I’m Arthur” sound like “I, Martha.” Which was actually pretty funny when she stopped to think about it.)

The reporter smiled widely, as if the two of them were about to have a who-can-smile-biggest contest. He hurried over and took a seat on the side of the bed. “Are you…uh…I mean…of course you’re not all right, but…um…”

“I’m too high to feel the pain,” Curt lied with a laugh. Mandy had been listening to him groaning in agony all day. He was definitely in a _lot_ of pain. She had a feeling they weren’t giving him as much morphine as they’d give other people with bullet wounds. “I saw your article—column—whatever it is. Been reading it all day.”

Surprisingly, Arthur blanched rather than blushing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t ‘ave—”

“What? What’s wrong?” Whatever Arthur was expecting Curt to have taken offense at, he apparently hadn’t even noticed it. Which could be the morphine, the pain, or Curt’s reading comprehension issues.

Arthur looked taken aback. “Um…well…I shouldn’t ‘ave…officially, you’re still claiming to be bisexual. I shouldn’t ‘ave said any different, only I was still upset and couldn’t really write without lettin’ it all out, and by the time I’d realized what I’d said, it was already with my editor, and he wouldn’t let me change it…”

“It’s okay. I doubt anyone believed it anyway,” Curt said, taking Arthur’s hand.

“That’s bullshit!” Mandy exclaimed. “Curt, if he’s just outed you, you need to get upset about it, no matter how much you want to fuck him after your arm heals!”

That made Arthur blush again, but Curt just laughed. “You know how many times tabloids have run stories about how I’m completely gay, with some tell-all story about a girl I promised to fuck and then couldn’t get it up for?”

“No.”

“Yeah, me either. I lost track years ago.” Curt shook his head. “Anyone who still thinks I’m bisexual hasn’t been paying attention.”

“You should still be upset about it,” Mandy insisted.

Curt just shook his head and turned to look at Arthur. “Are you gonna be okay? I mean, you said you were quitting your job…”

Arthur nodded. “I’d actually been thinkin’ about quitting for a while. I ‘ave some other jobs lined up.”

“Jobs that aren’t going to mind you being gay?”

He’d admitted to his own homosexuality as well as Curt’s? Mandy started sorting through the newspapers on Curt’s pillow, trying to find the one this Arthur worked for—used to work for. It had started with an H, because he’d dropped it…so that meant…right, the _Herald_. The front page article about the attack was credited to a Mary, so that couldn’t be what Curt was talking about…

Arthur’s column—more like a stream-of-consciousness essay, really—was on the second page, and she hadn’t gotten halfway through it when the door to the room opened and one of the nurses came in with a piece of paper in her hand. The nurse scowled at the room in general. “Visiting hours are _o-ver_ , Mrs. Slade,” she said, crossing her arms firmly. “You need to get on home. You too…whoever you are,” she added, looking at Arthur.

“You let me stay last night,” Mandy pointed out.

“Because of the emergency situation. He’s completely stable now. Get out.”

“No, really, I’m on death’s door,” Curt insisted, with the giddy energy of a child. “They’re my family and I need them with me in case I croak in the night.”

“You wouldn’t die if they hit you with a truck,” the nurse replied, shaking her head.

Curt only laughed.

“What’s that you’re holding?” Arthur asked, gesturing to the paper in the nurse’s hand.

“It’s a telegram for Mr. Wild. I’ll give it to him when you two leave.”

“Not many people would send Curt a telegram…” Mandy bit her lip. “Let me see that.”

“It’s not _for_ you, Mrs. Slade.”

“Miss,” Mandy corrected, out of habit.

“I keep telling you, you can’t have it both ways,” Curt laughed. “Either you gotta use your maiden name, or you gotta accept that you’ve been married. Unless you’re claiming you married your long-lost brother.”

“Don’t be disgusting! It’s a stage name! Who’d pay to see a lounge singer who’s a divorcée?”

“Who pays to see lounge singers in the first place?” Curt countered. Mandy couldn’t really argue with it, unfortunately…

While Curt was laughing at her, Mandy put the newspaper down, got to her feet, and simply took the telegram from the nurse. “I told you, that’s not for you!” the nurse repeated.

“No, but it’s from _my_ ex-husband, so I have just as much right to it as Curt does!” Which was not technically true, but somehow it felt true anyway.

“It’s from Brian?” Curt’s voice shook. It was painful to listen to.

“You just give him that telegram and get your skinny ass out of this hospital until tomorrow morning,” the nurse said in a warning tone. “Don’t make me call security.”

“Go on and call them. I’m not budging.”

The nurse stormed out of the room, threatening them with security guards and police, but Mandy didn’t care right now. She couldn’t lock the door, so she blocked it with a chair, then handed the telegram over to Curt. Not that it said much: just “Call me. Brian.”

“Gimme the phone.”

Arthur was sitting between Curt and the phone, so he obligingly shifted it, base and all, resting it on the pillow beside Curt.

Curt didn’t need to ask for the number. He hadn’t finished dialing long before he spoke into the receiver. “Shannon, it’s me. Let me talk to him.” The silence wasn’t very long before Mandy could hear the faint echo of Brian’s voice coming out of the receiver of the phone. She couldn’t make out the words, but the harmonics of his voice had been echoing in her ears for nearly fifteen years; she could never mistake them. “You could have called yourself.” Curt frowned at Brian’s reply. “Not sure that makes sense, but whatever. What did you—” Curt glanced over at Arthur, and smiled. “Yeah, I saw it. And no, we’re not fucking. Right now.” He laughed. “No, no, it was years ago. Just once. Wouldn’t mind getting some more,” he added, taking Arthur’s hand, causing a bit of a blush and a dazed, flattered smile. It was such a saccharine visual that it made Mandy want to puke. “Huh? Yeah, he’s the one who—” Curt bit his lip, and let go of Arthur’s hand again. “What the fuck are you plotting now?” He sighed. “Look, I just don’t want you pulling another stupid stunt that’s gonna backfire and make everything worse…”

Mandy had been trying to resist the whole time, but she couldn’t any longer. She grabbed the phone out of Curt’s hand. “Brian? Why don’t you tell _me_ what you’re up to.” She had almost as much lingering affection as Curt did, but she wasn’t so fucking _stupid_ about it.

Brian laughed sadly. “I suppose I should have known that visiting hours would mean nothing to you. You sound well.”

“Not that you care.”

“It’s not that I stopped caring.”

“Yes, it is. What are you planning?” Mandy wasn’t having any I-regret-it-too bullshit right now. That could come later, but not right now. There was still too much on the line right now.

“I’m sure you saw that reporter’s…extravagant plea for attention in this morning’s _Herald_.”

“Coming from the expert in extravagance, it must really be something,” Mandy laughed. “I did see some of it. Just what was I supposed to see?”

“He laid down the gauntlet. Made it so that I can neither approach Curt in his hour of need, nor can I refuse to do so. Not without revealing myself. And it was abundantly clear that he knows exactly what that means.”

“Oh, so he’s more than just a pretty face?” Mandy laughed. It was a refreshing change to feel like Brian was the one who was helpless…

Brian sighed. “I’m going to release an announcement tomorrow. As Brian Slade. That I asked Curt to do this concert because I have AIDS myself. Then—”

“You fucking idiot! Why are you always trying to dig yourself into deeper and deeper holes?!”

“What else do you want me do, Mandy?” Brian’s voice sounded tired. “Do you think anyone in the world would welcome the news that Brian Slade had become Tommy Stone?”

“Of course not.” That would only hurt everyone who cared about either performer. “Just don’t make the lies worse. What will happen if you tell that lie when people find out it isn’t true? They always find out, Brian. How many people are there already who know your secret? Eventually, someone’s going to figure out it and say so in public.”

“ _Someone_ already tried once, and he’s trying again with this article. Only in a backhanded way.”

Mandy laughed weakly. “I don’t think that’s it," she said, despite having no reason to believe it. Anything to keep Brian from claiming to be the victim. "Just, please, don’t tell any more lies. Why did you want to make that announcement anyway?”

“If Brian Slade answers the call in that article with a call of his own, to _all_ performers…then I, as Tommy Stone, can show my face in support of Curt without making anyone suppose the truth.”

“I see. All right, fine, but don’t lie any more than you have to. Don’t say you asked for your own sake. Make it for Cecil. He really _does_ have it.”

“I know that. Who do you think is paying his medical bills?”

“And are you going to make his suffering worse by ignoring him even further?” Mandy challenged. She knew Brian had never once visited Cecil in the hospital.

“Fine, Mandy, you win. I won’t claim to have the disease myself. I won’t give the excuse for Brian Slade to vanish forever and never be seen again by the world that doesn’t want him.”

“I think it wants him more than you realize.”

“It’s too late now,” Brian said, so quietly that Mandy could barely hear him. “Let me talk to Curt again.”

Mandy handed the phone back, then moved the chair aside and stepped into the hall to wait for the security guards. She’d have an easier time talking them into letting her stay overnight without Curt’s attempts to help. Once they were gone, then she’d have a long, hard talk with that Arthur and decide if he could stay overnight as well. She was not, at the moment, inclined to allow it.

***

Monday morning, the BBC News played an audio-only recording, a statement from Brian Slade to the music industry and to the world at large. “It has taken me all this time to come to terms with what I saw on the news from New York,” the message started. “The danger—the harm I nearly caused. No one wants to hear from Brian Slade now, least of all Curt Wild. I know that, and I knew it when I contacted him and asked him to help with the fundraiser for AIDS research. I didn’t ask for selfish reasons, but to help out an old friend—a friend I abandoned just as I later abandoned Curt and everyone else who cared about me. I wanted to make amends. I still want to make amends.

“Cecil Drake was my first manager, and I cruelly tossed him aside for Jerry Devine, not because he was the more skilful manager, but because he was smooth-talking and had more flash. I would not have become famous if I hadn’t, but that’s no excuse for what I did to Cecil. And now he is dying of AIDS in a hospice just outside New York City. I asked Curt to help raise money to discover a cure. Even if it won’t be in time to save Cecil, if it can help others like him…then maybe I’ll have made it up to him at least a little.

“Maybe Curt would have performed in the concert anyway. I don’t know. He didn’t want to talk to me, and it was painful to talk to him knowing the pain I had caused him, so I kept it short. We only talked business. And whatever his reasons, he agreed to perform in the festival. Unlike me, Curt is a good person, one who gives and one who forgives.

“I don’t know what that madman was thinking when he opened fire on a crowded concert ground. I don’t care. He harmed Curt. He killed so many innocents. There are no pits of Hell deep enough or hot enough to punish such a fiend. But everyone knows that. Everyone comes together in the aftermath of tragedy and says how sorry they are. How awful it is. How terrible someone has to be to do such things.

“If I could, I would do more than that this time. If there were still audiences who could stand to see my face, I would walk the world over, uniting everyone as one in support of the victims, in opposition to the hate. But I know my face would only cause hate among those who need to rally together in love.

“So I ask my fellow musicians—no matter the style of their music—to join together as one. To unite as we never have before. When someone attacks one of us, they attack all of us. When someone attacks our audience, they attack our whole world. We must all of us rally around Curt, all of us care for the victims of this attack, all of us do everything we can to make sure no one else will ever perform such a senseless attack again.”

Though delivered with very convincing pathos in the speaker’s voice, the appeal did not contain much substance: what he was actually asking for was unclear, at best. Regardless, by noon, nearly every singer in Britain had gone on record expressing their enthusiastic agreement. Queen was the first to speak up, the entire band calling a radio station to agree with him almost before the recording had finished playing. The three surviving Beatles were among the other early supporters.

The message—in an edited down form—and the highlights of the popular response in Britain played on the morning news all across America, and most American bands and solo artists also rallied in support of Curt and his fans. Most of them did so by calling in to radio and television stations, or having their management release statements to the press. But Tommy Stone and a few of the lesser singers who had been his opening acts in recent years all went _en masse_ to see Curt in the hospital and promise they would do whatever they could to help.

The numerous telejournalists recording the event all commented on how touched Curt appeared to be by this unexpected and unprecedented show of friendship from the far more popular and wildly conservative superstar.


	3. Chapter 3

Danny and his partner had drawn the short straw. Like always. Sometimes, he actually thought the game was rigged. But short straw assignment or not, this had the potential of being some gold star material. No one had bothered actually _asking_ Curt Wild how he felt about having Tommy Stone approach him to offer assistance. They all just assumed; some assumed that based on their conflicting music styles and political opinions that Wild was actually pissed off about it (and based on some of his infamous fits of temper, Danny suspected they were right), and others assumed based on their relative sales over the last few years that Wild was deeply honored to have someone so far above him offer him a hand (based on his reaction to a similar situation more than ten years ago, when Brian Slade fished him out of the gutter, they weren’t necessarily wrong). Everyone had been pestering Tommy Stone about it no end, but no one had actually talked to Wild since the event. And maybe for once he’d be open and honest about what he was _really_ thinking. Danny knew he couldn’t be as much of a mindless barbarian as he pretended to be. How could he be? Having tried to join a band in high school (just like everyone else who wasn’t on the football team and still wanted to get laid), Danny knew from first-hand experience that someone as idiotic as Wild usually pretended to be could never have learned to play the guitar, particularly not as well as Wild could play it.

They arrived at the hospital about half an hour after visiting hours started, and were assured that no one else had come to see him since Tommy Stone left yesterday. So at least whatever information they got was going to be a scoop. Or so Danny kept telling himself.

When they reached his door, Danny knocked—just to be polite—but didn’t wait for an answer before opening the door. After all, Wild was alone in there, right?

Wrong. Another man was sitting on the edge of his bed, and they were kissing so intensely that Danny wondered if they had even heard him knock. Also wondered if maybe they should just turn around and leave and pretend the hospital had barred them entrance in the first place.

Like the newcomer that she was, his partner did not pick up on the _get-out_ vibe the room was throwing off. “Excuse me,” she said, clearing her throat. “Um, we’re here to interview you, Mr. Wild. If you don’t mind putting off your make-out session?”

“Charlotte, do we need to have another conversation about _tact_?” Danny asked, trying to drag her backwards towards the door. “We’ll come back later.”

“But I was totally polite!” Charlotte insisted.

“There’s a time and a place for—”

“It’s all right,” a familiar voice said. And it wasn’t Curt Wild’s.

Looking back over at the bed, Danny realized belatedly that of course the other man in the room was the only one involved that no one was printing a word about, but who everyone was talking about in the press rooms. It wasn’t really a surprise to anyone to find out that the _Herald_ ’s convenient Brit was gay: he was everyone’s go-to man (no matter what paper they worked for) if they didn’t know some little peculiarity of English politics, culture or lingo, not because he was so friendly (which he wasn’t particularly) or so easy to talk to (most of them got the creeps just being in the same room with him), but because he was so very ready to talk to any good-looking man who bought him a drink. The fact that his eagerness did not extend to pretty girls had not passed unnoticed. But no one talked about it, because people _just didn’t talk about things like that_. His “resignation letter” in the _Herald_ had violated at least a dozen unwritten laws of the newspaper trade. There was talk of banning him from journalism for life. There was also talk of giving him awards. Sometimes simultaneously.

“Hi, Arthur!” Charlotte said, smiling. “We weren’t expecting you to be here. Downstairs, they said—”

“Charlotte, shut up.” Danny put a heavy hand on her shoulder to emphasize his point. Also to remind her that it could be used to cover her mouth if necessary. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find you here,” he added, looking at Arthur.

“The nurses usually are,” he said, with one of those creepy little smiles of his. Just what the fuck were they doing in there? While one of them had a massive bullet wound?!

Danny sighed. He didn’t like this, but… “Perhaps it’s serendipitous,” he said. “I’m sure there’s a lot you could add to the story.”

Both men looked troubled by that. Oh, was there something to hide? Even better. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Wild sounded pissed. Though he usually did.

“Just that,” Danny said, refusing to be cowed by a man who was practically chained to his bed. “A full-on confession like that in a daily newspaper is unprecedented. I’m sure our readers would like to hear more.”

Arthur scowled. “Shouldn’t the ‘ _Erald_ ’s readers be the ones wanting more? Not like you or anyone else reprinted any of it. Or even _mentioned_ it.”

“We did!” Charlotte insisted. “Well, I did. Only it got cut.”

“As it stood, it was…not suitable for publication. For re-publication, that is. A visceral response like that loses its punch the more it’s delayed.” Danny smiled, trying to placate the growing distrust obvious on Arthur’s face. (The man was so easy to read…) “I tell you what, though: you give me an interview, and I’ll make sure we reprint the highlights of your original piece. Maybe even the whole thing.”

“Uh…”

“I thought you were here to talk to _me_ ,” Wild said. Danny wasn’t sure if he was ticked off at being ignored, if he thought he was protecting his boyfriend, or perhaps both, but either way, it did reinforce Danny’s desire to get the hell out of that room ASAP.

“Yes, but it works out so handily,” Danny said, with his most disarming smile. Not that either of them looked disarmed in the least. “There’s two of us, and two of you. So Charlotte here can stay and interview you, and Arthur can come with me to…I don’t know, maybe the cafeteria is quiet at this time of day?”

“Don’t spend much time in hospitals, do you?” Wild asked, then laughed. “I dunno about this. Seems pretty sketchy to me.”

“He won’t change his mind about it,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “He’s notorious for it.” Danny knew he had a bit of a rep of being pig-headed, but he hadn’t thought it went so far as notoriety…

“It’s okay, you can trust him,” Charlotte suddenly chimed in. “Danny’s actually kind of scared of gays. No way he’ll try to seduce Arthur.” Danny tried to shut her up by covering her mouth, but it was too little, too late. She had wiggled out of his grip long enough to stun him into letting go entirely. What was _wrong_ with that girl?!

Both the other men stared at her for a minute or two. Then Wild started laughing, and Arthur merely sighed, shaking his head. “Fuck, do what you want,” Wild said, when he finally stopped laughing. “Talking to this girl without adult supervision ought to be interesting.”

“If you dare lay a hand on her—” Danny started.

“I don’t like chicks, remember?”

Given several paternity claims that had gone to court against Wild over the years (at least one of which had ended with him paying up), Danny was not convinced of that. The fact that he probably didn’t have the strength to get out of bed, on the other hand…well, it wasn’t completely convincing, either, but it was more so.

Arthur rose from the side of the bed, and set a hand on Wild’s shoulder. “I’ll find someplace nearby,” he said. “In case anything happens.” Then he smiled at Danny, causing a cold chill all up and down Danny’s spine. “Let’s go.”

The only reason Danny didn’t change his mind then and there was that he really didn’t want to have to spend all that time talking to Curt Wild, either, who reminded Danny of a rabid hyena. Arthur was more like a sickly lapdog; unpleasant, but also docile and easily frightened off.

Danny led the way back out of the room, but it was Arthur who headed down the hall towards the nurse’s station. “Wouldn’t the cafeteria be—” Danny started, gesturing in the opposite direction.

“Noisy. There’s always people there.” The constant presence (or at least possibility) of people in the cafeteria had, of course, been the main reason Danny wanted to go there. For his own protection. “Won’t be able to hear ourselves think.” Arthur didn’t look back at him as he spoke, just approached the little round desk at the end of the hall, where a somewhat rotund black nurse was on the telephone. She shot Arthur a look of contempt as he reached her, but kept on with her call, which appeared to be a list of items that needed to be restocked.

When she finally hung up the phone, she turned her full attention to Arthur with a disappointed sigh. “When did _you_ get back?” she asked.

“I never left,” Arthur replied, shaking his head. “I was hopin’ you could find a quiet place I can ‘ave a chat with this fellow here,” he said, gesturing to Danny.

“There is no place in this hospital where sex is permitted,” the nurse said, with a surprisingly level voice. “I don’t want anyone walking in on two naked men.”

“I’m not a fag!” Danny shouted. “I’m a—”

“He’s from the DA’s office,” Arthur said. “Needs my full statement as a witness of the attack.”

“Oh?” The nurse sighed. “Fine. Dr. Jenkins is on his vacation right now. You can use his office, as long as you don’t touch anything.” She pointed around the corner. “Down the hall there, on the right, just past the stairs.”

“Thanks.”

“Your boyfriend _is_ alone now, right?” the nurse added. “No one wants to try giving him a sponge bath with _you_ in the room.”

Arthur looked embarrassed, and shook his head. “He’s giving a statement, too.”

The nurse sighed. “You’d better clear out next time you’re asked. If you’re _really_ grateful for the office.”

Arthur nodded, but conveniently avoided actually _saying_ that he’d let the nurses do their jobs. Instead, he silently led Danny towards the office the nurse had indicated. It was suspiciously devoid of any human touches; the man was probably having an affair, and didn’t want pictures of his wife and children in his office to remind him of what he was betraying. Regardless of whatever this Dr. Jenkins might or might not be doing, the important thing about his office was that it had two chairs. Danny took the one at the desk, turning it away from the desk and towards the other chair, where Arthur sat down obediently.

“Ordinarily, I’d expect you to start out askin’ about the shooting itself, but I get the feeling you’ve already got all the information about that you want,” Arthur said, as Danny got out his notebook.

“Honestly, there’s a lot more I’d like to know about it, but editorial is convinced we don’t need any more on the attack itself,” Danny admitted, nodding. “Of course, editorial had no idea I’d be running into you, so…if you had anything specific you wanted to add that wasn’t in the account you already published, I’m open to hearing it.”

Arthur shook his head. “Not really. It was chaos; hard to process what was goin’ on at the time, and everything that happened after colors the witness’s understanding of events. Probably the best new testimony to be had now would be from the victims who’re still comatose.”

“If they wake up.”

“Yeah.” Arthur smiled pathetically. “I still hope they will.”

Danny shrugged. With everything else going on in the world, he found it hard to care about a handful of victims whose lives would still be shattered even if they survived. “I suppose, under the circumstances, the first question I have to ask is just how long you’ve been involved with Curt Wild, and why that wasn’t addressed in your…I’m not sure what to call it. Not really an article. Column, I suppose.”

“That’ll work,” Arthur agreed. “But we weren’t—technically, we’re still not really involved.” He shook his head. “Bein’ in the middle of all that death made me rethink my priorities, and being true to myself became the biggest one of all. That’s why I had to come out like I did. If I’d died, no one at my funeral would ‘ave even really known me. I couldn’t allow that to keep being the case. More than that, though, it made me realize what I really wanted in life—and yes, that includes Curt.” He sighed. “I think he’s only puttin’ on a show of interest because he’s so shaken by how close he came to death. Maybe he’s still a little interested, but…”

“Still?”

Arthur laughed uncomfortably. “We, ah, had a—an encounter. After a concert, almost ten years ago. No more than any other fan would get with a star, and I’m sure it didn’t mean anything to him, but it meant the world to me. When I tried to interview him back in February for that story, I wasn’t sure if he remembered me. I’m still not sure he did, actually, but he does now.” A particularly big, creepy grin. “And I’m hoping to make enough of an impression that he never forgets me.”

“Uh…huh…” Danny cleared his throat, trying to get the subject onto something less skin-crawling. “Any regrets about printing something so intimately personal in such a public form?”

Arthur’s laugh this time wasn’t the least bit discomforted. “I don’t consider it to ‘ave been very intimate at all. And no, I don’t ‘ave any regrets. Except…I regret quitting my job a bit. The investigative itch doesn’t go away easily. I don’t want to ‘ave to go back to pretending that I’m unaffected by stories of slaughter, but…I still want to go out and uncover the hidden story behind what happened. There’s a lot that isn’t being printed in the papers. Who is he, really, how did he get a military weapon, why didn’t the military police stop him, why did he do it, what’s happening with him in lock-up…all that.” He shook his head. “The one about the military police is the one that bothers me most, I think. The ‘ole reason everyone just accepts them standin’ on every street corner with assault rifles is because we were told over and over again that they were there to protect us, that they’d stop more shooters like the one who wounded President Reynolds. But what happened when a man opened fire on a crowded concert? They just stood there at every corner of the venue and _watched_! It was up to the audience and the regular police to stop him.”

Danny nodded. “Yes, that’s—we all want to know about that, but we’ve been advised not to print anything about it. If you get my drift.”

Arthur nodded.

“As to _why_ he did it, we’ve been told the police found a note in his apartment, expressing his desire to put a stop to research into a cure for AIDS, because it’s a punishment from God against the sinning homosexuals and drug addicts.”

Arthur chuckled. “And you actually believe that note’s genuine?”

Danny cleared his throat. Of course he didn’t. He wasn’t an idiot. No one believed it was real. If it was real, there would have been official information released regarding what the suspect was saying to the police in prison. For that matter, if it was real, the information would have been in a press release direct from the police, not merely ‘leaked’ to a single newspaper. “I think we’re off-topic a little…” Danny said weakly. He’d left the tape recorder with Charlotte, so there wasn’t technically a record of what he said, but he still didn’t dare risk being overheard admitting that he didn’t believe the official story.

“Didn’t know we _had_ a topic,” Arthur commented.

“From what you’ve said so far, it’s obvious you’re still following the story,” Danny said, ignoring him. “What about the political element that’s entered it? Feelings, comments?”

Arthur sighed, looking pensive. “That’s…that’s where it gets hard to talk about. I spent a lot of years trying to pretend I was just like everyone else. The false shell I’ve been livin’ in all these years is still fighting to contain the real me, no matter my intentions.” He shook his head. “Obviously, I don’t like bein’ a target of political hate. But yeah, I knew that could happen when I wrote that column. It’s…how do I put this? I suppose it was naïve of me; some part of me thought if I told the complete and unvarnished truth, somehow people would just _sense_ the way my hands were shakin’ as I typed, and somehow that would move them to be more understanding of others. Not that I consciously thought something so stupid, just…I don’t know. I was still badly shaken. I’m not sure I put enough thought into it before it was too late.” He frowned. “It doesn’t surprise me that most of the conservative politicians are trying to walk a fine line, condemning the shooting without voicing any support for the victims. What bothers me is Reynolds comin’ out and saying that it was all Curt’s fault instead of the shooter’s. I’m hopin’ I just imagined the implication that he wanted to blame it on me, as well, but…” He wasn’t imagining it. Danny had noticed that implication, too, but no way in hell was he going to admit that.

“Are you expecting this to become a talking point for the election? Or perhaps I should be asking if you plan on trying to make it into one.”

Arthur chuckled. “I don’t ‘ave any ins with any politicians, so it’s not like I could do anything to make it an election issue. Can’t even try to stir up the voting public anymore, not that I ever had much power to do that anyway, not at a paper as small as the ‘ _Erald_. I’m not really expectin’ it to get much play. Reynolds controls too much of the media, and this isn’t in his favor, so it’ll go away quickly. The only lasting effect I can foresee it ‘aving is if it succeeds in driving a wedge between the Committee for Cultural Renewal and Tommy Stone.”

“That brings up an important point,” Danny said, nodding. “Was the result you got the one you expected from your address to Brian Slade at the end of your column?”

“I didn’t really know what to expect. Didn’t know quite what I wanted, either, to be honest. I just…it was a reminder how fragile life is, and how quickly it can be extinguished. I didn’t want them to waste the rest of their lives without making up at least a little. When I saw Curt six months ago, the pain was obvious on his face, and I knew Brian regretted their break-up—or at least, I knew he had regretted it ten years ago—and…I just didn’t want to leave it that way.”

Danny nodded, and frowned down at his notes. This was not proving to be a very useful interview. But maybe there really wasn’t much he could really get out of this guy…

***

Part of Curt hadn’t wanted to let Arthur leave with that obvious homophobe, but…it sounded like they knew each other. And overall reporters weren’t really known for being violent, so…it’d probably be okay.

The girl reporter was pacing across the room, poking her giddy little face into every gift basket and bouquet of flowers, sniffing, examining and reading cards. She seemed especially interested in the box of chocolates. “You can have the coconut ones, if you want,” Curt offered. “I’m allergic.” Actually, he just didn't like coconut (too sweet!), but admitting that was way too fucking embarrassing. And didn't really fit his image, either. In retrospect, chocolates just didn't fit his image all around; he should have offered to let her have the whole box.

“Oh! No, I’m good!” She hurried over and took a seat on the chair beside the bed. “So! How long have you and Arthur been dating?”

Curt glanced at the tape recorder her babysitter had brought in with him; it was still off. “We’ve never gone on a date,” Curt told her, with a grim chuckle. “Hasn’t really been safe to go on a date with a man in this town since AIDS caused such a huge backlash of hate. But maybe we should try. Be nice and nostalgic.”

“But you’re… _together_ …right?”

“Sort of. What’s it to you?”

She giggled, and shook her head. “I’m just curious, that’s all. To be honest, I kind of had a crush on him for about ten minutes back in December.”

“Not much of a crush.”

“Welllllll, it was this Christmas party at a press club thing, and I was the new girl and all, and there were all these gross old men, but then suddenly there was Arthur, all young and handsome and that crazy accent and of course I was smitten! Only then he totally didn’t want to talk to me or any other girl, just to other guys.” She waved her hand back and forth. “Didn’t take a genius to figure out which team he plays for.”

“Uh…” Curt really wasn’t sure how (or if) he was supposed to respond to _any_ of that.

“Oh! Sorry! This is so unprofessional of me!” She pressed the record button, and picked up the attached microphone. “This is Charlotte LaGrange, interviewing Curt Wild, at 10:42 a.m. on August the sev—”

“Do you really gotta do all that bullshit?” No one else who had interviewed Curt had ever bothered setting the scene on the tape recorder.

“Um, I guess not?” Charlotte laughed uncomfortably. “Danny’s never let me do an interview by myself before.”

“Yeah, I guessed as much.” Which made it _really_ fucking suspicious that he’d left _her_ to interview Curt, who was presumably their actual assignment…

“So, before we get into the meat of the interview, I have to know—and I think our readers will be curious, too—why are you still in the hospital?” Charlotte asked. “You seem pretty lively to me. I mean, I know you suffered a gunshot wound, but isn’t that usually only overnight observation unless the victim’s life is in danger?”

“Yeah, usually,” Curt agreed, sighing. “Motherfucker shattered the bone,” he said, gesturing to his left bicep. “They’ve had me in and out of surgery all this time, trying to find a way to do something about it; the pieces were too far apart to bind properly. Fuck, at first they were afraid shards might get into my blood and slice up my heart from the inside.”

“Eew. So…are they still working on a solution?”

Curt shook his head. “They decided to put in a metal rod to replace the destroyed part of the bone. And we just have to hope the real bones will bond to it properly. If they don’t…I’ll barely be able to use the arm.” He tried to flex his left hand, but the fingers barely wiggled. “Even if it does bond properly, I may never regain full control. They keep telling me I’ll never play the guitar again, but…I’ve had doctors tell me things before that were bullshit, so I’m not giving up.”

Charlotte looked at him curiously. “Are you left-handed?”

“No, but the guitar’s a two-handed instrument.”

“Oh. Right.” She laughed uncomfortably. “So when is this metal rod going in?”

“Surgery’s tomorrow. If it goes well, I’ll be able to go home the next day, but my arm’ll be stuck in a massive cast for months until they’re sure the metal and bone have bonded properly.”

“Wow, sounds like a pain.”

“Yeah.” Curt wasn’t entirely sure how he was supposed to do all those little everyday things like dressing himself. Admittedly, as long as he didn’t leave his apartment, he could just go without a shirt, but…

“Well, I’m sure all our readers will wish you good luck with the surgery,” Charlotte said, smiling at him. She was a bit of a spaz, but seemed like a nice enough girl, actually. Would have been more fun if she’d been as incompetent as she’d seemed at first.

“Thanks.”

“So, moving on to the elephant in the room, tell me about yesterday,” Charlotte said. “We’ve all seen the carefully staged video footage, but what was it really like when Tommy Stone came in to see you? I looked it up, and I found some earlier comments from him that made it sound like he didn’t think much of you, and some comments from you that—”

“Okay, stop right there.” Curt shook his head. “Things between me and him are complicated. Really fucking complicated.” So complicated that it was hard to know how the fuck he was supposed to talk about it without getting his face shot off by government hard-ons. “So…before he rose to fame as Tommy Stone, singing voice of the Committee for Mind Control, he and I were actually pretty close. He was a different person then, of course, but so was I, really. Thing is, after we parted ways, he’s gone all establishment, and I’ve tried to be more or less the same person I’ve always been, only sober. So, yeah, there’s some bad blood there, because who he is now can’t understand why I still fuck men, and why I don’t kowtow to Reynolds, and all that shit. And of course I can’t understand why anyone who isn’t completely mindfucked could ever support a fascist like Reynolds.” Curt sighed. “Also, the music Tommy’s making is complete shit. He’s a really talented musician—pretty good guitarist, great singer, brilliant songwriter—but instead of using his talent, he’s just vomiting out this mass-produced pabulum because it’s what his corporate underwriters told him would sell.”

“It does sell,” Charlotte pointed out.

“Yeah, it sells. I’m all too aware of that. But it’s garbage.”

Charlotte nodded, but either didn’t agree enough to go on record with it, or didn’t dare risk offending her bosses by speaking up about it. Or maybe both.

“Anyway, we’ve fought about it before. He _knows_ it’s trash, and he doesn’t care, because it’s what sells. He says it’s because it’s what makes people happy. Looks to me like it’s because it’s what people are willing to pay money for, but maybe it’s the same thing.” Curt shrugged, only to let out a yelp of pain as the motion transferred down to his left arm. “A-anyway…that thing yesterday…that was basically him…burying the hatchet. Saying that he’s willing to put aside everything we’ve fought about and be friends again.” Not that they’d ever been friends, as such…

“So…the look on your face in the video…was on the level?”

“Uh…what look on my face?” Curt tried imagine what his face must have looked like while the cameras were rolling, but couldn’t come up with anything. “I haven’t seen the video myself.”

“Oh, well, you looked really touched, like you were sort of misty-eyed that he was doing that for you.”

“I wouldn’t say I was misty-eyed, but yeah, that’s about right. When I piss people off, they usually stay pissed off. I don’t have much experience with them changing their minds like that.”

Charlotte laughed. “So, with all those stars offering to support you, do you have any plans? Have you talked to any of them?”

“Other than Tommy and the peons he brought with him, I haven’t talked to anyone in person,” Curt told her, “but a couple of old friends have called. And my manager’s been busting his balls trying to contact pretty much everyone who announced their support. Honestly, I’d been halfway to firing him before this happened, but he’s earned a lifetime job just in the last few days. Practically gone hoarse from so many phone calls.”

“Any arrangements made yet?”

“Nothing’s firm, but there’s definitely going to be a special charity album. Almost everyone he’s talked to said they wanted to record a song with me.” Curt laughed. “I’m usually the guy no one wants to work with, ‘cause they never believe me when I tell ‘em I’m through with drugs. But now…I’m the belle of the fucking ball.” He shook his head. “It’s humiliating that no one liked me until I nearly died, but…that’s just how it is. Mandy and my manager are working on getting the album hammered out.” Or that was what Phil had said to get Mandy to leave with him last night. He was probably actually trying to get laid there, but the more power to him if he could make it happen. Mandy seemed like she needed it. Of course, so did Curt. “If he can play his cards right, there’ll be maybe a live TV special concert, and the proceeds from the TV broadcast can pay the artists, then the album sales will go to a charity to provide for the victims and to fight to get guns off the streets.”

“Won’t that be unpopular? I mean, some people get touchy about the whole Second Amendment thing.”

“There’s nothing in the Second Amendment about fucking machine guns. Those things shouldn’t be in civilian hands.” Curt shook his head. “Look, my old man used to go hunting almost every weekend, so I know how it is with the people who cling to their guns and all, but a hunting rifle’s really different from what that motherfucker used to shoot us. That shouldn’t have been on the streets. No one should have a weapon like that. It only exists to kill people.”

Charlotte nodded. “Yeah, I see your point. And even Tommy Stone’s on board with that, despite his ties to the Reynolds administration?”

“Yeah.” Though that in itself was a problem. Curt didn’t want to perform with him while he was doing shitty half-assed singing as Tommy Stone, but if he used his real singing voice, everyone would know he was Brian… “It’s possible he won’t actually be taking part, though. Exclusive contracts and all that shit. He might just help out as a producer.” More importantly, he had promised to write a proper song, a Brian Slade song, for Curt to perform. Curt wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that they couldn’t perform it together.

“And what’s your reaction to the official statement released by President Reynolds last night?”

Curt laughed. “He sounded like a toddler having a temper tantrum when he found out other people wanted to play with his favorite toy. I doubt there was anything to all his hot air; he won’t cut ties with someone as popular as Tommy Stone. That’d hurt Reynolds, not Tommy. And even if Reynolds is too dim-witted to see that, his handlers will see it.”

Charlotte giggled slightly, then fell silent, tapping her notes with the tip of her pencil. “Um…if you don’t mind me backing up a little…?”

“Guess not.” Anything was better than talking about Reynolds, surely.

“When exactly was it that you and Tommy Stone were friends?”

Okay, so there _were_ things worse to talk about than Reynolds. “I don’t think he’d want me talking about that. Like I said, he was really different then. Did stuff he now condemns, shit like that. We’re just starting to get over the bad blood. Don’t stir it back up again.”

“Oh…but…you can’t even say _when_ it was?”

“It’s not that I can’t. I won’t. There’s a difference.” The difference being that Curt was pretty sure he’d be killed if he did say anything further.

“That seems awfully arbitrary,” Charlotte insisted, with a petulance that bordered on pouting.

Curt was just starting to defend himself when the door opened without a knock, letting Mandy in. She didn’t seem to have the glow of the recently laid, so Phil probably struck out. Again. “Oh…? You’re not as popular as I thought!” Mandy exclaimed, with a laugh. “Where’s pretty boy gone?”

“Arthur’s getting interviewed by my partner,” Charlotte informed her gleefully. “Are you Mrs. Slade?”

Mandy just smiled at her, clearly uncertain just how—or if—she wanted to answer that question. Curt avoided looking at her, just in case she decided to turn to him for help. He was all out of answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to admit it: I enjoy adding in the occasional scene from the POV of a random OC like this. It lets me give such a different perspective on events and characters. (And it's kind of fun designing a character like Danny, who has so many twisted up perspectives and yet thinks he's the epitome of normality.)
> 
> I must apologize to anyone with any deep medical knowledge for the situation I created to keep Curt in the hospital for a week. I had absolutely no idea how to research what kind of damage he could suffer from a gunshot wound that would keep him in the hospital for an extended period of time without being seriously life-threatening, or how said damage would have been treated in the '80s, without some really crazy search strings that would probably put me on an NSA "watch list" as a threat to domestic security. Given my relatively low hit counts on these fics, I thought it was probably better to err on the side of bizarre, inaccurate medicine than to end up being treated as some kind of threat.
> 
> I also apologize, to everyone, for having Curt's POV describe Charlotte as a "spaz". It's a completely offensive term now, but in the '80s? It just felt like the only appropriate descriptor from an '80s mindset. :(


	4. Chapter 4

“We’ll know for sure when the X-rays come in, but all the signs look promising,” the doctor said, glancing from Curt’s chart to the man himself. “You should be able to leave the hospital this afternoon. If all goes well.”

Curt nodded, and glanced at his left arm, buried in a heavy cast. Just looking at that cast made Arthur’s arm itch. “So…about this metal you put in there…is it gonna cause problems later on?”

“Problems, Mr. Wild?”

“Yeah, like with magnets and shit.”

The doctor blinked several times, then cleared his throat. “Industrial strength magnets of the sort used to hoist cars into trash compactors could give you trouble, yes, but if you’re worried about walking past your refrigerator and taking all the magnets away with you, I can assure you that won’t happen.”

Curt laughed. “Not quite what I was thinking, but good to know. How about getting on planes? Do I need some kind of special passport to prove I’ve got metal in my arm?”

“We can prepare medical identification papers for you, if you’re worried about that, but given your celebrity status and how well publicised this incident has been, I really don’t think you’ll need them.” The doctor aimed a fatigued look in Curt’s direction. “Unless you have other pressing concerns, I’d like to get on with my duties.”

Curt just waved his hand to dismiss the man—even though he was a top-flight surgeon—and they were soon alone. But that left Arthur with all kinds of worries, not the least of which being how he was going to have any excuse to spend time with Curt as soon as he was released from hospital. Yes, Curt had been interested in some light snogging, and he had certainly _claimed_ he was interested in more than that, but he might only have been saying that to make Brian jealous…

“Hey, did you ever decide what you wanted to do about a new job?” Curt asked suddenly.

Arthur jumped slightly, having failed to expect to be addressed so soon. “Um, no, not yet. I was thinkin’ I might try freelance journalism, actually. Be my own boss.” Though that idea came with all sorts of other, even worse problems…

“Perfect. ‘Cause I was hoping to offer you a job myself,” Curt said, with a roguish grin that set Arthur’s blood on fire.

“What sort of job?”

“Hard to describe. Part-time nurse, part-time cleaner, part-time…hey, what’s that job called? It’s like a butler, only more personal, helping people get ready in the morning and shit.”

“You want me to be your valet?” Arthur asked, appalled.

“Well, sort of. Just while I can’t use my arm, you know? I can’t even dress myself right now.”

Arthur nodded. “I guess you can’t,” he agreed. “But I’m not takin’ a position as a valet. That’s…well, fifty years out of date, for one thing.”

“Call it what you want. I just want you staying at my place and helping me get dressed in the morning, and undressed at night.” Curt grinned. “And maybe keeping me company at night, while you’re at it.”

“I’ll be glad to, but I’m not accepting money for that last part.” Getting paid for sex was a level of desperation that Arthur was glad to say he had never yet sunk to.

“All the better,” Curt agreed, reaching out for Arthur’s hand with his good one.

Arthur took his hand and squeezed it, but he wasn’t sure what he should say.

“You gonna have any trouble making arrangements?” Curt asked.

“Arrangements?”

“I’ll probably be stuck in this cast for months, and who knows if my arm’s gonna work right when it gets out again. You’ll wanna do something about your apartment if you’re not gonna be using it for that long.”

“Ah.” Arthur cleared his throat, turning away from Curt’s face. “That’s…actually…” He sighed deeply. “That’s actually why I got here so late that first day.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve already been evicted.” He shook his head, and finally looked back at Curt, who looked worried. “Soon as he read that article, my landlord evicted me from my flat,” Arthur explained. “Said I was violating the building’s policies regarding risk of infectious disease.”

“Motherfucker! The day after you’d come that close to getting shot, and he does that?”

Arthur nodded. “I can’t say I wasn’t expecting at least a little friction there, but I hadn’t expected it to start that soon.”

“Wanna sue him? I know lots of lawyers. There’s no way that’s legal, what he did. Just being gay doesn’t mean you’ve got AIDS, and even if you did, it’s not like it’s airborne or something.” An uncomfortable pause. “You, uh, you don’t, right?”

“Not as far as I can tell.” There was, after all, a certain incubation period between infection and symptoms. But Arthur had been quite careful the last four years, and hadn’t been getting as much action as he used to. He was _pretty_ sure he was clean. Probably.

“Good. That would—that would really suck. So, do you wanna sue?”

“I don’t think there would be any point to it. It was a horrible flat anyway.” Arthur shrugged. “I packed up my things and left them with a friend. I can get them whenever I need them.”

“Your friend’s not gonna get evicted for the same reasons, is he?” Curt asked.

Arthur laughed. “He’s a friend from the ‘ _Erald_ , so no. He’s completely straight. Married, in fact, with a baby on the way.”

Curt nodded. “What were you gonna do if I _hadn’t_ offered to let you stay at my place?”

Arthur shrugged. “Stay with friends and exes until I could find a new job and a new flat, I suppose. I promised myself I wouldn’t worry about it until you were safely out of hospital.” One worry at a time. Only way to keep from going mad.

Curt shook his head. “And here I thought you’d become all sensible and shit…”

“Does my irresponsible side disappoint you?” Arthur wasn’t sure if it had disappointed _him_ , but it had certainly surprised him. Like part of his past self spontaneously re-emerging out of the grime of the ‘80s.

“Dunno. Just…eh, doesn’t matter.” Curt looked down at his arm, and the immobilising sling that held the cast up in front of his chest. “How are we gonna deal with this?” he asked. “I mean, around the house, I don’t have to wear a shirt, so that’s fine, but…with plans being made for a record, I’m gonna have to go out and sign contracts, and Phil’s gonna want me on all the talk shows…”

“I think I know someone who can help,” Arthur said. “As long as you don’t mind buyin’ a lot of new shirts.”

“Yeah, I’ve sold more records in the last week than in the last two years. I’m good to buy some new clothes.” Curt laughed, then looked at Arthur critically. “Maybe I should buy you some new clothes, too. It’s not right, putting beat-up shit on under such a pretty face.”

Arthur felt his cheeks heat, and shook his head. “You don’t ‘ave to do that,” he said quietly.

“I’m gonna like having you around a lot more if you dress better,” Curt said firmly. “Though I don’t mind if you wanna raid my closet instead. Specially for the shirts, since I can’t wear ‘em right now anyway.”

“I think I like that option better,” Arthur agreed, with a smile. The last time he’d had someone else buying his clothes was in 1976…

Curt seemed pleased by the idea, and spent a while telling Arthur about the shirts he’d have to choose from. Apparently, Curt never bothered cleaning out his closet, if he still had T-shirts he’d bought at concerts in the mid-‘60s. It also sounded like his closets were quite massive; the more he talked about them, the more Arthur began to feel like Curt’s _closets_ were bigger than the flat Arthur had just been evicted from.

That thought made Arthur wonder about Curt’s flat—no one ever seemed to write about his living space—so he asked about if there was any risk of it feeling crowded with an extra body floating around for several months. “No fucking chance of that,” Curt laughed. “It’s huge. And no worry of getting evicted, either: I outright bought it back in ’75, when I was still on top of the world.” Curt grinned at him. “It’s the penthouse, too, with a big deck, so if you want, we can go out there and…reminisce.”

Arthur grinned, too. “That sounds perfect,” he agreed.

Curt seemed gratified by Arthur’s enthusiasm, and he started going on at some length about the merits of his flat, which sounded to be quite enormous. The deck was large enough to contain a large hot tub, and there were four bedrooms in the flat itself, as well as a living room, dining room, television room, game room and a former bedroom that Curt had had soundproofed and turned into a sound booth. “It’s not top of the line recording equipment—not even top line for ’75—but it’s good enough to tape a new song I’m working on to see if I’m going in the right direction on it.” Curt smiled. “I even had ‘em set it up so I can start it recording from inside.”

Arthur agreed that was a great feature, and Curt continued, going into more detail about the game room. He had meant it literally, it turned out, because it contained just plain _games_. There was a television with an Atari system, two arcade cabinets, three pinball machines, a whole bookshelf filled with board games, and a card table on which to set them up, or just to play cards. Naturally, the room also had a classic old jukebox, filled with all of Curt’s favourite singles. It was exactly the kind of excess that the world had come to expect of Curt, and yet it also wasn’t, since it didn’t involve drugs, alcohol or sex. The way Curt went on about it, it all sounded surprisingly wholesome: in fact, his enthusiasm was almost childlike.

Curt hadn’t finished talking about his flat when the surgeon returned and said that the X-rays had come back fine, and that once the hospital finished up the paperwork, Curt would be free to check out. Then he paused, looking concerned. “You do have someone who’ll help you out around the house, don’t you?” the doctor asked. “You may find yourself surprised at how hard it is to adjust to being unable to use your left hand.”

“Yeah, I’ve got someone,” Curt said, patting Arthur’s shoulder.

The doctor didn’t look pleased by the answer, but he kept going, explaining the check-out procedure, and all the follow-up appointments that were going to be needed. Arthur had a feeling he was going to end up being Curt’s secretary as well, keeping track of all the medical exams he was going to need, and maybe keeping an eye on his medications, too. As he was leaving, the doctor suggested that Curt should try to take a brief nap to build up his strength, since he hadn’t been out of bed in nearly a week. Surprisingly, Curt didn’t fight the suggestion, and Arthur started looking over the day’s newspapers while he napped.

Mandy Slade came back shortly before the check-out time, while Curt was just waking from his nap. “I thought you might need some help getting out of here,” she explained. She was dressed very nicely, and wearing much more make-up than she had been before. Either she was going on a date later, or she was expecting there to be a lot of paparazzi as they left.

“We can handle it without help,” Curt said, scowling at her.

“Curt, that’s an awful thing to say after she’s spent so much time looking after you this past week!” Arthur exclaimed. “I’m sure we can use the help,” he added, smiling at Mandy.

“What is all this ‘we’ stuff?” Mandy asked, looking at him suspiciously. “What are you plotting?”

“Arthur’s gonna be staying with me while I’ve got this cast on,” Curt explained. “As my—what’d you call it? Valet?”

“I’m not being called a valet,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “Call me a live-in assistant or a nurse, or a bloody secretary, but not a valet. That implies a lot of things I don’t want implied about me.” Among other things, it implied the impossibility of sexual relations between employee and employer.

“Aw, but it sounds so classy!”

Mandy laughed. “I like the idea of his job title being ‘Bloody Secretary’,” she said, still laughing.

“That’d be a little insensitive,” Curt sighed. “Otherwise, yeah, I’d go for that one. C’mon, though, valet is better than cabana boy, right?”

Arthur coughed. “Yes and no.” At least cabana boy was kind of sexy…

“Amusing as all this is, have you thought about how you’re going to get back to your apartment?” Mandy asked, looking at Curt.

“Uh, by cab?”

Mandy sighed, shaking her head. “Yes, wonderful idea. With all the press downstairs waiting to see you emerge, and then you get in a dingy New York cab. Right. Great image.”

“There’s really that many?” Arthur asked, alarmed. It shouldn’t be such big news, surely.

“Fuck ‘em,” Curt said. “I’m not too good to ride in a cab like everyone else. Being low class is kind of part of my image, you know?”

“You’re so predictable it’s almost painful,” Mandy told him. “Still, I can’t believe Brian was right.”

“Brian…?”

“He said you’d want to take a taxi.”

“And he doesn’t want that,” Curt said, his voice souring like milk. “He wants me riding in the same fancy shit I did when we were together.”

“Of course.” Mandy shrugged. “He was going to send his personal limousine, but I was able to talk him out of it. But only by promising that I’d have your manager arrange a limo and have the label pay for it.”

“His need to run everything is the one thing about Brian that I’ve never missed,” Curt sighed. “Figures that’d be the only part I’m getting back.”

Arthur did his best not to squirm. Just how much of Brian did Curt want to get back? Had he sealed his own doom by trying to patch things up between them? It had been a stupid idea, of course, but…no, no, it hadn’t been stupid. No matter what he managed to make of his time with Curt right now, of course it wouldn’t be lifelong. Arthur would be lucky if Curt was actually willing to keep him around even for the whole time his arm was in that cast. Curt was somebody special; he needed special people around him. Someone as boring and normal as Arthur could never make the cut. There was no point in getting his hopes up for anything real or serious between them. Therefore, it was best if he used the momentary attention he was getting to make sure he left a lasting, positive impact on Curt’s life. Something aside from the obviously futile gesture of having tried to use his own body to shield him from a high-powered weapon that would have fired right through him.

Arthur remained in an awkward silence as Curt and Mandy discussed Brian’s obsession with being in control. Only when the nurse arrived with the wheelchair to take Curt through the discharge process did Arthur manage to reanimate himself. After the nurse unhooked the IV and catheter, Arthur helped Curt to his feet, and into the loo with his clothes, carefully walking behind him so neither the nurse nor Mandy could see the view through the back of Curt’s hospital gown.

With the cast in the way, Curt couldn’t get out of the dressing gown by himself; in fact, Arthur couldn’t figure out how to remove it without causing Curt pain, so he ripped new holes in the paper garment to get it off. “I’ll help you on with your shirt,” Arthur promised, looking through the bag of Curt’s things. They included a short-sleeved, button-down shirt, and a pair of jeans, as well as socks and a pair of tennis shoes. “I can’t find your pants…who packed this bag for you?” And what had happened to the few clothes Curt had been wearing at the concert? Maybe his manager had taken the leather trousers to be cleaned before Arthur arrived that first day?

“I dunno. One of the Rats, probably,” Curt said. “Look, don’t waste your time. I don’t usually wear underwear; I can’t imagine them bothering to pack any. I’m not sure I even _have_ any.”

Arthur shook his head. “Can’t imagine still doing that. I haven’t gone without in years.”

“Don’t do much clubbing, huh?”

“Not really.” He did sometimes go without when he was headed to a gay bar, but…that wasn’t a very safe thing to do these days, and he hadn’t been in more than a year. “Can you handle the trousers on your own?”

“Yeah, no sweat,” Curt said, holding out his hand.

Arthur put the jeans into the outstretched hand, and watched uncomfortably as Curt sat down on the toilet, awkwardly leaned down around his cast to put the jeans around one ankle, then the other, and stood up again. He was able to do up the zip, but after almost a minute of fiddling one-handed with the button, the waistband of the jeans slipped from his grip, and the whole garment ended up on the floor around his ankles. “Motherfucker!”

“I’ll get it,” Arthur said, moving up beside him, and bending to pick up the jeans. He would have been lying if he claimed it wasn’t a huge turn-on to see Curt naked, with his trousers around his ankles, but as this was hardly the time for that, Arthur did his best to tamp down the excitement that visual caused. Once Arthur had fastened the button of the jeans, he retrieved Curt’s shirt, and held it out for Curt to slip his good arm through the sleeve.

“Now what?” Curt asked. “No way we can get my other arm through there.”

“For now, we’ll just have to drape it around the cast,” Arthur said, doing just that, then fastening a few buttons to keep it in place. “Looks a bit rubbish this way, but there’s not much we can do about that.”

“Undo the buttons,” Curt ordered. “Except the top one. That’s enough to keep it in place.”

“But—”

“You wanna deprive the cameras downstairs of what they’re here for? They wanna see me all helpless in a cast like a kid who fell off his bike. If they get it, they’ll print a picture and give it a cute little headline about how pathetic I look.”

“Isn’t that a good reason not to—” Arthur started.

“If they _don’t_ get it, they’ll start printing mean shit. About how maybe I’m faking it. Or about how suspicious it is that you’re with me. Or god knows what else they can come up with.” Curt shook his head. “I’ll take the devil I know over the one I don’t.”

Arthur nodded. “Suppose so,” he agreed, undoing the buttons. With that finally done, they emerged from the loo, and found that Mandy was almost finished bundling up all of the gifts well-wishers had brought, with help from the two uninjured Rats. (The drummer had already been sent home, of course, but was still under orders to stay off his injured leg as much as possible.)

“All right, let’s get you out of here,” the nurse said, smiling at Curt. “I’m sure you must be eager to get home.”

“Yeah. No offense, but the food here’s kinda shit.”

The nurse laughed. “So I’ve heard,” she agreed. “Now, sit yourself down, and we’ll get you all checked out and ready to leave.”

Curt looked at the wheelchair dubiously. “Yeah, I’ll walk, thanks.”

“That’s not allowed, Mr. Wild. It’s policy. You have to be wheeled out.”

“No, really, I’m good.”

“Mr. Wild, I’ll lose my job if I let you walk out of this room.” The nurse’s stern expression left no room for argument, even from Curt, who reluctantly took his seat on the wheelchair, after being urged on by the Rats, who insisted that their comrade had also been wheeled out, despite his complaints.

The check-out process went relatively swiftly, consisting largely of a repetition of all of Curt’s care instructions (thankfully also provided in a printed form, so Arthur didn’t need to take notes) and a couple of prescriptions to be filled out at whatever chemist’s Curt usually went to. Curt’s manager—an oily, balding, scrawny man named Phil—was on hand to provide all necessary payment, a fact that no doubt made everything go much more smoothly.

After that, the small procession was turned towards front door of the hospital. Arthur could already hear the crowd of cameramen and reporters out there waiting. As the wheelchair came within a few feet of the door, Curt suddenly said “Okay, this is far enough.”

“Mr. Wild, we’ve already been through this,” the nurse replied, sighing.

“You know what those jackals out there are gonna do if you bring me out in a fucking wheelchair?!”

“I don’t know why you’re making such a big fuss about this,” the nurse said, shaking her head. “It’s standard at any hospital. You have to leave the premises in a wheelchair. That’s just how it is. Especially when you’ve been in bed for five days thanks to a gunshot and four surgeries! I am _not_ losing my job because your masculinity feels threatened!”

With that, she shoved the wheelchair ahead so fast that Curt didn’t have a chance to argue further. He hadn’t managed to start another cry to stop before he was outside, with everyone else running after him.

The limousine was waiting in the hospital’s drop-off and pick-up turn-around, not fifteen feet away from them, but it felt like miles away, with all the cameramen in between them and the car. The air was strobing with flashbulbs, and people with television cameras were calling Curt’s name, trying to make him look at them. The chaos was such that even the nurse was stunned into motionless silence.

Curt recovered first, of course. He got to his feet, used his good hand to sweep aside the shirt draped over his cast, then flipped off the assembled crowd. From anyone else, that would have provoked outrage, but given Curt’s infamy for flipping off even his own fans, it didn’t seem to provoke even a batted eye. (In fact, Arthur was surprised it didn’t provoke cheers.) He started sauntering over towards the limousine, ignoring the crowd like the pro he was.

Mandy was the next to recover, and she was soon following him, giving the cameramen a dazzling smile and an almost flippant wave as she passed them. The Rats were right on her tail, of course. By the time Arthur and Phil were hurrying towards the limo, the driver had already closed the door behind Curt, Mandy and the Rats, and was heading back towards the front seat. Arthur had to open the door himself so he and Phil could get into the vehicle.

Once they were all inside, the driver started the car, and it pulled away from the hospital, merging into the crowded New York City traffic outside. A small window slid open, and the driver’s voice came through it. “Where to, Mr. Wild?” the driver asked. “Your apartment?”

“Yeah,” Curt said.

“Wait, can we make a stop first?” Arthur asked, looking at Curt.

“What kind of stop?” Curt replied.

“It’s about the new shirts. They’ll ‘ave to be modified for you, so it’s better if we can get the process going right away.”

“We can call a tailor to his apartment later,” Phil said. “He needs to conserve his strength right now.”

“Really, a friend of mine can handle it,” Arthur insisted. “Won’t take five minutes. They don’t ‘ave to be form-fitting, after all.”

“Where’s this friend at?” Curt asked. Arthur gave him the address, and Curt frowned for a minute or two, before glancing out the window. “That’s more or less on the way,” he announced. “You catch that address?” he shouted at the driver.

“Yes, Mr. Wild. Did you want to go there?”

“Yeah.”

The driver reported that it would probably take about fifteen minutes in the current traffic, then closed the door to the back seat, which felt a tiny bit crowded with seven adults in it, but not too badly, as their seats were spread out along the sides of the vehicle. The main problem, really, was that whenever Arthur tried to stretch his legs out a little, he ended up kicking someone who was sitting on the other side.

The first couple of minutes of the drive were silent and awkward, until Curt laughed and said how much that had felt like ‘old times.’ The Rats and Mandy were soon agreeing with him, reminiscing about the heady days of the early ‘70s, and crazy times on the touring trail. Only Arthur and Phil remained uncomfortably silent. What could Arthur have said? The Flaming Creatures had never gone on tour, not while he was with them, anyway, so he’d never gotten to experience the rush of a concert tour, and he surely never would, even though it sounded like Curt and the Rats fully expected a new concert tour as soon as Curt’s arm was healed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I was re-proofing this for the umpteenth time right prior to posting, it suddenly occurred to me that concerts in the 1960s probably did not sell t-shirts. In fact, I think the kind of t-shirts I was thinking of didn't even start existing until the mid- to late 1970s. So I may have to retcon that as t-shirts Curt had bought in the late '70s or early '80s for bands or concerts he had seen in the '60s, and Arthur just misunderstood what Curt meant.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure what my obsession is with making Curt a gamer, but I do seem stuck on that notion. Maybe it's because I play so many games myself... :P


	5. Chapter 5

Mandy didn’t like the fact that Arthur was insisting on having one of his friends fix up new shirts for Curt. Unless said friend specialized in clothing made to go over and around casts, it would have been better all around if a professional tailor did it. Specifically, a tailor who had sewn for Curt before and already had all his measurements. If Arthur thought he could become as controlling of Curt as Brian had been, he was in for a surprise. Mandy wasn’t going to stand by and watch that happen. Curt was too naïve for his own good sometimes, and as his friend Mandy saw it as her duty to protect him from his own over-inclination to trust every pretty man who happened to do him a small favor or two.

The address Arthur had given wasn’t in the garment district, but in a seedier theater district that was more or less off-off-Broadway. Some of the theaters were legitimate, and others were…well, very much _not_. The particular building where they stopped was—according to the signage—mostly filled with theatrical agencies, but there were also a few costumers listed. Even so, it just didn’t seem the most logical place for this sort of errand!

Phil and the Rats elected to remain in the car and wait, but Mandy insisted on going inside with them. She wanted to see what this old friend of Arthur’s was like, and hear for herself what he proposed to do, and how much money he planned on gouging out of Curt for it.

Arthur led them up to the second floor, which was entirely listed as being the offices of the Open Exposure Entertainment Company, a name that did not inspire confidence. At least it was to the door labeled as the costume department that Arthur led them, knocking briefly before opening the door and walking inside.

“Gary? You in?” Arthur called, his voice a little tremulous.

“Arthur, darling!” A man at least six foot five rushed out from between several long rows of fabric bolts and attached himself to Arthur with a brief kiss on the lips. He was dressed in cream-colored pants and a flame-red shirt with a floral print, and had beautiful dark skin and hair. “I was absolutely beside myself with worry when I heard what happened at the concert! I knew you were planning to go, and I just can’t tell you how terrified I was when I heard about the attack! You ask anyone—I was a wreck until I saw the news that night and saw you get up on stage like that! Ah, how did my sweet, shy little fledgling become such a big hero, hmm?” There was a hint of a Latin accent to the man’s voice—not surprising, given his coloration—but it wasn’t too strong; he was probably born in New York to immigrant parents who spoke Spanish around the house. Whoever he was, he was certainly loud, in every sense of the word. Surprisingly, Curt didn’t seem to have any reaction to him whatsoever, despite the way he was hanging all over Arthur, who Curt claimed he wanted to get something going with. That didn’t make sense; whenever a fan had started gushing over Brian like that, Curt had been bristling and tensing up like he was going to run over and knife them. But now he was just watching passively, not caring at all…

“Sorry I worried you, Gary,” Arthur said, trying to worm his way back out of the larger man’s arms. “But I’m hardly a hero.”

“Nonsense! A normal person would have been running away, not trying to save others! And quitting your job in such a beautiful gesture was heroic, too! Oh! Did you want a job here? I know I could get you one with—”

Curt cleared his throat. “He’s already got one with me,” he said.

The loud Latin finally looked over at the other two people who had entered his shop, and smiled widely. “Oh, and you’ve brought the man himself with you! You really are a lucky little thing!” he exclaimed, ruffling Arthur’s hair with one hand.

“Just what are we doing here?” Mandy asked. “This doesn’t seem the place to—”

“Believe me, it’ll make sense in a minute,” Arthur assured her, even as he cut her off. “Gary was one of the first people I met in New York, and—”

“My employers were all arrested, you see, on the orders of some conservative ne’er-do-wells who claimed we were breaking decency laws,” Gary explained, shaking his head. “Well, Arthur here was sent along with the reporter who came to cover the story, and…of course I spotted him right away as a real treasure! You understand,” he added, winking at Curt.

“Of course.”

“ _Were_ your employers breaking decency laws?” Mandy asked. It seemed an important point, especially if anyone found out they had come here…

“Not in the least! Our girls always wear pasties, and keep their panties on,” Gary insisted. “This isn’t Atlantic City, after all!”

“What, no male strippers?” Curt actually sounded disappointed.

“Alas, I can’t talk the bosses into it,” Gary sighed.

“So, why are we here?” Mandy asked, looking at Arthur pointedly.

“I thought Gary could rig up something to help Curt wear shirts that still look normal while he’s got that cast on, of course,” Arthur said. He turned to his ‘friend,’ and gestured towards Curt. “I thought maybe you could use Velcro on the sleeve, like you do on the strippers’ things.”

Gary nodded, and walked over to Curt, lifting up the draped side of the shirt he was wearing. “Mind if I unbutton this?” he asked.

“Go for it.”

After undoing the top button, Gary gave the cast a thorough examination, along with the sling, and then looked back at Arthur. “I don’t really have time to do a truly proper job of it, but I could get something simple worked up by tomorrow or the next day.”

“It doesn’t need to be tailored,” Arthur assured him. “You can use regular shirts off the rack and modify them.”

“That’ll make it a lot faster,” Gary agreed, checking the size listed on the collar of Curt’s shirt. “You want shirts like this, or knits?”

“I usually wear T-shirts around town,” Curt said. “But I’ll probably have to meet with some suits to sign contracts. Better have some nice ones, too.”

Gary nodded. “Shouldn’t take long. A line of Velcro along this side, shoulder, and along the top and bottom of the sleeve should work best.”

“The side as well?” Arthur sounded surprised.

“Only on the knits, of course. He’s not going to be able to pull things on over his head like normal. Not with that cast in the way.” Gary re-fastened the top button on Curt’s shirt. “I’m not working on anything much right now, so I can easily have a few of them ready by tomorrow. Do you want them delivered, or…?”

“My manager can pick them up,” Curt said. “I think I’ve got his card somewhere…”

“I’ve got one,” Mandy offered. Phil was always pushing the things on her. As if that would somehow make him less ugly. She ought to just tell him she wasn’t available so he’d leave her alone. Only then Curt would probably start sticking his nose into her affairs, and he either wouldn’t approve of her boyfriend or start hitting on him, or possibly both. “You’ll want to call his office number,” she said, handing the card to Gary. “He’s almost never in his office, but his secretary will know where he is and pass your message along. But just how much are you planning to charge for this?” That point was _not_ going to be left for Phil to deal with, after the work was done and it was too late!

“Mandy, I can afford it,” Curt sighed. “Don’t get all weird on us.”

“No, she’s right, we should agree on something,” Gary said, nodding. “My boss will want to see a contract if I’m doing freelance work off the books. I’m technically on an exclusive contract right now.” He paused, rubbing his chin. “If your manager will compensate me for the price of the off-the-rack shirts—with a receipt, of course!—I’ll do the work for free, as long as you give me a nice autograph.”

“What, really?” Curt looked at Gary with surprise. “Fuck, that’s…I kinda feel guilty about that…” He shook his head. “Guess I shouldn’t complain, though. I’ll have Phil bring it with him tomorrow.”

“Oh, can’t you sign it now?”

Curt laughed uncomfortably. “Yeah, I could, only…wouldn’t you rather it was on a poster or an album or something?”

Surprisingly, they spent at least five minutes “haggling” over what kind of autograph Curt was going to sign, and on what. Mandy tuned it out very quickly. It was just adding fuel to Curt’s ego fire; it had just been smoldering embers for years, but with all the attention from Brian’s “call to arms” and then this…he was likely to be back to his old, swaggering self at any second. Because that was just what the world needed.

***

Curt’s flat was every bit as enormous as it had sounded from the description, if not even more so. Arthur felt quite overwhelmed just walking around in it. The stereo in the television room must have cost a bomb, and now that it was about ten years old, it probably counted as some kind of antique. (For the presence of an 8-track tape deck, if nothing else.) The pinball machines were a surprise to Arthur: he had expected all three to date from the early or mid-‘70s, but two of them were from the 1950s, one with a Fun Fair theme, and the other space aliens. “They had those at the five and dime near where I grew up,” Curt explained, “only my old lady never let me play ‘em. Said they were the devil’s playthings.”

“So you bought some like them once you could afford it?” Arthur surmised.

“Nope. Those are the actual ones my mom wouldn’t let me play,” Curt said, with a big grin. “I brought them new, fancy ones that would _really_ tick her off, in trade for these two.”

“Ones that would really tick her off?”

“Yeah, they did a Playboy one, if you can believe it, so that was one of them, and then the other was just like this one,” Curt said, gesturing to the third machine.

Arthur had dismissed it as being ‘70s sci-fi at first glance, but now that he came close to it, he saw it was nothing of the sort. The silver-clothed individual taking up the main graphic wasn’t holding a massive space-weapon, but a strangely shaped silver guitar. The face was all wrong, but the heavy dark eyeliner, shoulder-length blond hair, bare chest and rock accoutrements everywhere made it clear, especially with the words ‘Rock and Roll Savage’ emblazoned on the top and sides. “Is that…supposed to be you?”

“Yeah, cool, isn’t it?” Curt’s grin got even bigger. “The record label sued them into oblivion, of course, but I snagged a couple of the machines in the deal. Kept this one, and sent the other one home to piss off my folks.”

“A knock-off pinball machine…” Arthur honestly hadn’t realised Curt’s career had ever been big enough for _that_. He knew there had been a rip-off Maxwell Demon one (which, of course, had been utterly demolished by an instant lawsuit), but Brian had been bigger in Britain than Curt ever was in America.

“Wanna play it?” Curt asked. “I didn’t want to fuck around inside it and rig it to play without coins, so I keep a big jar of quarters on the shelf there.”

“Maybe later.” Arthur had never really played pinball more than once or twice, so he was likely to fail miserably. He’d rather not do that with Curt watching.

Curt didn’t press the issue, and they kept going with the tour of the flat, though Curt had to stop and rest a couple of times. Not that he _admitted_ that was why he wanted to stop; he would just sit down on a handy piece of furniture and tell Arthur to check out something or other in the room. Which was one thing in the game room or the bedroom with all the vintage rock posters, but a little more awkward in the dining room, where the only things to look at were the window with its view over the city, and a couple of framed photos of snowscapes that became boring after only a few seconds.

The deck was the final leg of the tour. It was reached through a sliding glass door off of Curt’s bedroom, and it was about twice the size of the bedroom. Half of it was fully exposed, with a railing to keep people from walking off the edge, but nothing to keep people in the nearby buildings from seeing them. The other half was enclosed by trellises on two sides and above, with a canopy that could be pulled out to keep the rain off. This was the half that had the hot tub, currently under a lid. “I keep water in it all summer, and only drain it when it gets cold enough it might freeze,” Curt explained, starting to shift the lid aside. “Fuck, I can’t do it one-handed…”

“Let me get it.” Arthur quickly lifted the lid and put it on its side nearby, resting against the trellis, which was wrapped in flowering vines.

Curt pressed a button on the side of the tub, and the interior started producing bubbles. “The water should be warmed up by the time we’re ready to get in,” he said. “After all that time in that hospital bed, I need it.”

“Don’t you want to wash first?” Arthur asked. “Soap off the sweat instead of dirtying the water in the hot tub?”

Curt stared at him a moment, then sighed. “Yeah, guess I should. You’ll have to help, though.”

“Of course.”

As it turned out, getting Curt showered was a real ordeal. Undressing him was simple, of course, as was fastening the protective plastic bag around his cast. But there wasn’t room for both of them in the shower in Curt’s bathroom (not for such complex maneuvering as was going to be required for Arthur to do most of Curt’s washing for him, at any rate), so they had to go to one of the other bedrooms, where there was a bath/shower combination unit. Keeping Curt’s arm dry while washing his body hadn’t been too difficult, but trying to shampoo his hair and keep his arm dry at the same time was a nightmare that they both quickly gave up on. Arthur promised to wash it in the sink for him later on, but Curt didn’t seem entirely enthusiastic about that idea.

The debacle left them in a less than ideal mood to enjoy a soak in a hot tub, all the more so since Curt’s doctor had strictly forbidden him to partake in any alcoholic beverages until he was off his medication. Still, after a little while, the warm water and the constant caresses of the bubbles managed to loosen them both up a bit. In fact, Arthur was feeling almost relaxed for the first time since the concert.

If they’d been having their soak just before bed, it might have been perfect.

Since there wasn’t much food in the flat—and Arthur didn’t have much experience doing real cooking anyway—they called out for pizza, despite Arthur’s worries that greasy New York-style pizza might be too much for Curt’s stomach, between a week of bland hospital food and the powerful pain medication he was on. While the pizza was on the way, Curt put a video tape in the VCR, so they could watch a nice, relaxing movie as they waited. It was an old screwball comedy, light and charming and utterly without violence, and it kept their minds pleasantly disengaged.

Until the pizza arrived. Curt stopped the tape while Arthur went to answer the door. When he hit stop on the remote, the television was showing an advertisement for women’s sanitary napkins. Disgusting, but decidedly safe.

When Arthur returned with the pizza, along with a tray containing plates, napkins and a couple of glasses of soda, the television was showing the evening news. It was a story about the election as Arthur approached, but before he could suggest turning the movie back on, it changed to a different story. “Crowds gathered today around the prison facility where Rick Johnson, suspect in the shooting at the concert this past Saturday, is being held,” the newsreader announced, before the feed changed to show the crowds. They weren’t enraged fans, or relatives of the dead and wounded, there to demand Johnson face justice for what he had done. They were there to demand his release. “Church groups and anti-homosexual activists from across the country have gathered in support of Johnson,” the newsreader continued, “insisting that his actions were divinely sanctioned, and therefore above reproach.”

The camera panned across the crowd. They were chanting prayers, and holding signs that said things like “Free Saint Johnson” and “Punish the Wicked, Not God’s Messenger,” and “AIDS is God’s Will.” The television switched off again before the newsreader could continue.

“Motherfuckers,” Curt grumbled, throwing the remote onto the nearest table. “Bet my mother’s in that crowd.”

“I’m sure not,” Arthur said, even though he knew perfectly well he had no reason to think that. “You were almost killed. No matter what happened in the past, I’m sure your mum wouldn’t want to see you end up dead.”

Curt sighed, taking a slice of pizza out of the box. “You know what happened when Brian was—pretended to be shot?”

“I…um…?”

“I got a telegram next day, from back home.” Curt paused to take a bite of his pizza. “Well, it was sent the next day. Took it a while bouncing around Europe to find me. By the time it got to Berlin, Mandy had already told me what had really happened, so I was…well, I’m not gonna say I was good, but I was better than I had been in the first twenty-four hours.”

“And the telegram was from your mum?”

“Yeah. Know what it said?”

Arthur shook his head. “I’m assumin’ it said something awful, but obviously I ‘ave no idea about the details.”

“It said that it had been divine punishment. And that I was sure to be next.” He laughed bitterly. “She pretended like she was comforting me, saying how I’d be reunited with Brian in hell, so we could burn together forever.”

“Your own _mother_ said that?!”

Curt nodded. “Bet she was fucking thrilled when she heard about it. I had just enough sense not to send her a telegram right away telling her that Brian wasn’t dead. Instead, I sent one saying there was no way Brian Slade was in hell, but that if she didn’t believe me she was welcome to go down and look for him. After all, Satan was probably lonely without her there to fuck.”

“You…uh…really…?”

Curt laughed. “Man, you should see your face! Yeah, I sent that. Sort of. I mean, that’s what I told Jack I wanted it to say. But I was still too shit-faced to leave the hotel, so Jack was the one who delivered it to the telegraph office. And he left off the part about my mom fucking the devil. Too bad; that was my favourite part.” He shook his head. “When I sent those pinball machines, I sent her a flyer about them, and wrote her a little note on it telling her not to get so jealous about them being the devil’s playthings, because she was obviously going to become his favourite plaything as soon as she croaked.”

Arthur just shook his head, feeling disappointed.

“What, you never want to do anything to piss off your old man?”

“Well…no, not really. I try to forget he even exists, to be honest.”

“How well-adjusted.” Coming from Curt, that sounded like a terrible insult.

Arthur sighed. “You don’t know what it’s like, all right? American schools breed rebellion into their students. British schools breed in obedience. It’s hard programming to shake off.”

“But Brian—”

“Didn’t also have a bullying older brother.”

“Yeah, that’d do it,” Curt agreed, sighing. “Man, I could use a beer right now.”

“I know the feeling.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Arthur shook his head. “If I’m to consider this arrangement a job of any sort, then I want to do it right. And lettin’ you cause yourself harm by ‘aving alcohol when the doctors all insist that you shouldn’t is a prime example of doing it wrong.”

Curt grimaced, but didn’t answer, returning to his pizza instead. “Hey, about my hair,” he said after a while, “don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Why not?”

“There’s a salon near here where I get it bleached every so often. I’ll just go in there once or twice a week and have them wash it. Works better in a proper shampooing sink than in a regular sink.”

“All right.” Arthur hadn’t exactly been looking forward to that task.

They finished eating their dinner in more or less complete silence, and after Arthur put the few leftovers in the refrigerator, Curt suggested that they needed something to cheer them up. Arthur agreed wholeheartedly, expecting he wanted to turn the movie back on. Instead, however, Curt ejected the tape and put in a different one. Which turned out to be fairly shoddy gay porn. It wasn’t even good enough to be much of a turn-on. Though that was possibly because by now Arthur had seen Curt’s naked body extensively across the day (especially in the afternoon), and how was he supposed to get it up for those porn actors whose bodies weren’t as good and cocks weren’t as long? Still, it was a moderately pleasant diversion, if for no other reason than because it suggested Curt wanted them to go to bed and make love after the movie was over.

When it was over, they did indeed retire to Curt’s bedroom, where Arthur stripped them both naked. Curt laid back on the bed, and Arthur took up a position above him, kissing him passionately, even as he made sure not to rest his weight on Curt’s injured arm. The position felt much too familiar, and it wasn’t long before Arthur could hear the shots ringing in his head.

He pulled away, rolling off to the side. “I’m sorry. I—I can’t…I keep thinking about the—about what happened…”

“Yeah. Me, too. The screams. They don’t go away.”

Arthur nodded, and looked over at Curt. “Maybe I should go sleep in one of the other bedrooms.”

“Don’t.” Curt looked at him with a pleading in his eyes. “Stay in here. Please. I—that guy—if he wanted to kill anyone, it was me, and—”

“Curt, if he’d wanted to kill you, he would have.” Arthur shook his head, rolling onto his side so it would be easier to look at Curt. “He just wanted to kill. He didn’t care who.”

“I don’t know…”

Arthur reached over and took hold of Curt’s good hand. “I do,” he insisted, trying to sound as confident as he could. “He wasn’t after you.” He squeezed Curt’s hand, and found Curt squeezing back almost fearfully. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right here,” Arthur promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, of course, the label could not really have sued the company "into oblivion" over that pinball machine. Way too generic to prove anything. But they could have made enough of a stink that the company decided it wasn't worth the effort to fight it and simply pulled the machines (or at least stopped making them). That's probably what really happened, only Curt didn't quite follow what was going on because he was still on drugs at the time.


	6. Chapter 6

Curt wasn’t sure what time it was. He was sweaty and naked. The room was eerily quiet, and the bed felt enormous under him. He was on the edge of panic when he realized he could hear someone else breathing. Only then did he feel the weight of Arthur’s hand in his own, and remember that he was back in his own bed. Piecing things together, he was able to recall—not that he wanted to—the nightmare that had woken him: he’d been running through a crowd, pursued by his parents, who were trying to shoot him, and didn’t seem to care that they were killing scores of innocents in their desire to wipe the stain from their family tree.

Even as nightmares went, it was stupid when he looked at it now that he was awake. It had been terrifying while he was still trapped in it, though.

He wasn’t sure how this whole live-in aide thing was going to work out, but just at the moment he was glad not to be alone. He fell back to sleep listening to the slow, steady sound of Arthur breathing on the other side of the bed.

When Curt woke up again, the bed felt cold and empty. A moment of panic gripped him, until he heard the water running in the bathroom. As he sat up, trying to remind himself not to act like such a fucking coward, a twinge of pain shot through his arm, leading to a perfectly natural exclamation.

Arthur hurried in from the bathroom, half his face still covered in shaving cream. “Curt? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

“It’s just my arm,” Curt grunted. “Nothing…nothing new. Nothing…nothing to worry about.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Arthur fussed for another minute or so before returning to the bathroom. It was comforting, knowing he was that attentive, but what was going to happen when he went out to get a real job? He’d talked about it at length in the hot tub yesterday. How he wasn’t going to feel comfortable until he’d found a freelance writing position, if not something more serious. That was no good. What was going to happen if Curt needed something while he was out job-hunting, or out working? No good, no good…

Curt kept worrying about it all the way through breakfast, and all the more so when Arthur said he’d like to fetch his things from his former co-worker’s house. Maybe in the short term there was something…

Maybe he could call Mandy and she could come over and just hang out. Or one of the Rats. Yeah, maybe he should call all of them. He could tell them he wanted to work on getting ready for all the new songs they’d be recording soon. No one would hear that and think he was being a coward. They’d just say he was thinking ahead for once.

He hadn’t quite figured out how he wanted to put it when someone knocked on the door of the apartment. “Are you expecting someone?” Arthur asked.

“It’s too early to be Phil,” Curt said, shaking his head. “Maybe it’s one of the neighbors…?” Didn’t seem that likely. He had a few friends among the other tenants, but they weren’t likely to call first thing in the morning. They’d come by after school let out for the day. No, wait, it was summer, there wasn’t any school…

“I’ll just see who it is, then,” Arthur said, heading for the door. Whether he wanted to be called a manservant or not, he absolutely _was_ acting like one. The sound of the door opening was followed immediately by a wordless exclamation from Arthur. It didn’t sound panicked, as such, but it still set Curt’s heart to throbbing. Was it someone come to finish the job…?

“What are _you_ doing here?” That was Tommy Stone’s voice. Curt’s heart calmed down a little, but not much. What was Brian doing here so early in the morning?

“I could ask you the same thing,” Arthur replied.

“Get out of my way!”

Stomping footsteps preceded the sound of the front door shutting, and of Brian’s—Tommy’s—arrival in the living room. He smiled slightly at the sight of Curt, then looked around. “Your sense of interior design is terrible.”

“Yeah, great. You don’t have to put on the act now that the door’s shut,” Curt told him. “Arthur already knows.”

But Tommy just scowled as Arthur hurried into the room after him. Arthur looked at Tommy and the anger on his face, then looked at Curt. “D’you want me to step out for a while?” he asked. “Go get my things, or your medicine, or some groceries…?”

“Yeah,” Curt said. “All of the above.” This was likely to take awhile.

Arthur flinched slightly at that, but didn’t say a word. He just went into the bedroom, put back on the clothes he’d been wearing last night, and headed out with only a wave goodbye.

“Ahh, you’ve hurt his feelings,” Brian said, with a rather cruel laugh after the door closed behind Arthur. “Poor fragile little child.”

“Yeah, you don’t sound like you feel sorry for him.”

“I don’t.” Brian—Tommy—sat down on the couch near Curt. “What is he doing here?”

“I asked him to stay here with me. To help me. You know how hard it is doing _anything_ with one arm tied to your chest like this?”

Tommy glanced down at Curt’s cast, and shook his head. “I suppose it would be difficult. But why _him_?”

“Because he’s good-looking. Why have someone hang around who isn’t easy on the eyes?”

“Is that really the only reason?”

Curt sighed, and looked up at the ceiling. “’Course not.”

“You can’t be entertaining a serious relationship with him. He’s a reporter, for Christ’s sake!”

“I know that.” Curt shook his head. “You don’t get it. We’d met before, back in ’75, and—”

“Yes, you told me that already,” Tommy said, shaking his head. “Moreover, I read the interview with him in the _Sentinel_. Which made it sound very much like he intends to force you into a long-term relationship whether you want one or not.”

Curt laughed. “I don’t think Arthur’s capable of that. Look, don’t worry about me, okay? Once my arm’s out of this sling, I’ll able to handle myself just fine. Until then, I need him.” An uncomfortable pause. “So…uh…why are you here? You can’t have written that song already…?”

“Not completely.” Tommy pulled some sheet music out of his jacket. “It’s very…rough.” He looked down at the paper with a frown. “It doesn’t feel like my old music—our old music.”

“Lemme see.” Curt held out his hand, and Tommy obliged him with the music. Their fingers brushed each other in passing, but Curt didn’t feel any of the old spark from the contact. Whatever had broken between them, it obviously hadn’t been mended. Maybe it _couldn’t_ be mended. Maybe it was better that it didn’t get mended, anyway. Maybe.

Curt spent a while looking over the sheet music, which was more awkward than he expected, without having both hands to hold it and switch the pages. He hummed through the tune, and tried to keep humming it as he looked at the tentative lyrics scrawled on the last page.

“Yeah, there’s something off about it,” Curt agreed, as he set it down again. “Maybe you’re just out of practice, ‘cause you’ve spent too long writing shit.”

Brian’s laugh, warm and sweet, but no longer seductive. “Maybe.” He looked at the paper pensively. “Is there any particular topic you want the song to be about?”

Curt looked into his eyes, the only part of him that still looked like Brian. “Mistakes. Fixing old ones. And what’s been lost to them.”

“Yes.”

***

The first stop had been the chemist’s. Fortunately, they were willing to deliver the medicine once the prescriptions were filled, so Arthur didn’t have to worry about that. It turned out that the grocer would also deliver—for a small fee—so Arthur took that option as well, leaving him unencumbered to go fetch his things from Murray’s flat. As it was the middle of a week day, Murray was out working, but his wife gladly let Arthur in, and did what little she could to help him shift his things into the front hall of the building. (In her advanced state of pregnancy, she couldn’t do much, but Arthur found the labour of lugging things about helped to calm him down. Probably reminded him of his time with the Creatures, which remained the best period of his life.)

He needed to take a taxi to get everything back to Curt’s building, since he couldn’t carry his suitcases, box of books, and computer all at once. Fortunately, Curt’s building had a doorman, who helped him get the things inside the building and into the lift. Once the lift was at the penthouse, Arthur was on his own, of course, but at least it wasn’t far from the lift to Curt’s front door. He just hoped Tommy Stone wasn’t still inside. Even though trying to get Curt and Brian over their quarrel had been his own goal, it still hurt Arthur and even made him a bit jealous, knowing he would never be able to win Curt’s heart now.

To Arthur’s surprise, it was neither Curt nor Tommy who answered when he knocked on the door: it was Mandy Slade. And for once she actually seemed pleased to see him. “Good,” she said quietly, as she opened the door fully, “now you can babysit him.”

“Babysit?” Arthur repeated, but Mandy was already walking back into the flat. Arthur wasn’t able to follow until he’d moved all his things out of the main hallway and into the flat’s interior hallway. By the time he got there, Mandy was already saying her farewells to Curt. She didn’t say another word to Arthur, just left the flat, leaving him completely confused. “What…what’s…?”

Curt avoided his gaze for some reason. “She had other stuff she wanted to do,” he said.

“Uh…oh…okay…?” Arthur sat down on the sofa next to Curt’s good side, putting a gentle hand on his arm. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” He was clearly anything but, judging by the haste of the barked-out reply. But he just as clearly didn’t want to talk about it, so Arthur let it drop.

“What did To—er—Br—um…what did _he_ want?”

Curt laughed. “Doesn’t matter which name you call him by,” he said. “And mostly he wanted to talk about the song he’s writing for me.” Curt smiled, a painful nostalgia on his face. “Been a long time since we’ve worked on a song together.”

Arthur bit his lip. Was it the right thing to say to express his sympathy that such a long time had passed since the last time, or to congratulate Curt on getting to do so again?

“You get your stuff back all right?” Curt asked, filling in the silence of Arthur’s uncertainty.

“Yeah. Is there any particular place you want me to set up the computer?”

“Whoa, you’ve got a computer?” For some reason, that seemed to impress Curt.

“Of course. I needed it to write my stories on.”

Curt nodded, looking thoughtful. “I guess one of the bedrooms,” he said. “The one between mine and the recording studio. So you’ll be handy if I need you when you’re writing.”

“All right. Should I put the rest of my things in there, too?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get that dealt with, then. So they’re not still cluttering up the hall.”

Curt didn’t argue, so Arthur set to work carrying his things through the flat to the spare bedroom next to Curt’s own. That was the one with classic rock posters, which filled Arthur with a painful nostalgia. It wasn’t the same Hendrix poster Arthur had had in his bedroom in Manchester, but it _was_ the same poster of Jim Morrison, except that Curt’s poster was autographed. No, not just autographed, Arthur realised, as he looked closer, but personally signed to Curt, as a talented young guitarist filled with promise for the future. When in the world had Curt ever performed in front of Jim Morrison? It was almost a relief that the jealousy eating Arthur up over that was jealousy of Curt for getting to meet the late heart of the Doors than it was at the thought of anyone getting a private performance from Curt. (He didn’t even know that it _had_ been private. Maybe Curt had been auditioning in case the Doors needed another guitarist. Or maybe they _had_ needed extra guitars for a particularly large concert. Arthur didn’t really know much about the specifics of American rock of the latter years of the 1960s; he only knew the music.)

Of course, the poster’s reference to Curt’s skill with a guitar also turned sobering quickly, since the doctors had all insisted he was likely never to regain full usage of his left hand. It could have been worse—it could have been his _right_ hand!—but Curt’s guitar solos had always been the highlight of live recordings of the concerts when he and Brian had been on tour together; Curt was simply a much better guitarist than Trevor Finn, and it really showed on the extended solos. If he could never play again, that would make his comeback that much less satisfying for everyone involved.

At some point, Arthur would have to go to the library and see if he could find any books on healing past this kind of injury, any suggested treatments that might help Curt get back to normal. Sometimes there were exercises that helped…

By the time Arthur got his computer set up, his clothes deposited in drawers and closets, and his books stacked neatly in a corner (since there weren’t any spare shelves in the room), it was nearly noon. Returning to the central rooms of the flat, Arthur found that Curt was watching television, though he seemed less than engaged by it.

“Did you want me to make lunch?” Arthur asked, then was struck by a sudden thought. “Oh, the groceries were delivered and put away, weren’t they?”

“Yeah. The medicine, too. But don’t worry about lunch. It’s being delivered,” Curt said. “Chinese.”

“It’s probably not a good idea,” Arthur sighed. “You should try to ease back into your regular diet after so long in the hospital.”

“I’m fine.”

“All right.” Arthur sat down on the sofa. “Did you ‘ave any plans for the afternoon?”

“Phil’s coming by about one to deliver those shirts, then we’re gonna go to the salon and get my hair washed.” Curt reached up a hand to his ponytail. “Now that you’ve reminded me of it, I can just _feel_ how dirty it is, like it’s eating into my scalp.”

Arthur laughed. “Sorry.” After an uncomfortable silence, he looked over at the television, which was in commercial. “What are you watching?”

“I dunno. Some shit.” Curt sighed, shaking his head. “I was gonna go play a game, but…” He wiggled the fingers on his left hand. “It takes two hands to hold the controller.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I just never thought about how little I can do with only one hand. You know I can’t even read a book without lying it flat on a table or something?”

Arthur nodded. “But that’s why I’m here to help, right?”

“I don’t think you wanna hold a book for me so I can read it.”

“Well, no, but maybe we can come up with a solution so I won’t have to.”

Curt sighed. “Maybe after a little while, they’ll readjust the cast so it’s not so fucking close to my chest. That’d help.”

Arthur expressed his agreement with the sentiment, but found nothing else to say on the subject, letting them fall into an uncomfortable silence until the food arrived. How had he ever thought he’d be able to enter into an actual relationship with Curt when they had absolutely nothing to talk about? Conversation, on the whole, did not resume until Phil arrived with the shirts from Gary. As Arthur had expected, Gary had picked out extremely nice shirts that complemented Curt’s coloration beautifully. Honestly, he’d done _too_ good a job; as far as Arthur could tell from looking through Curt’s closet, he never dressed that nicely when he was just casually going about his day-to-day life.

It was a great relief to be able to help Curt into a shirt that wasn’t bulging, hanging open, or gathering up because of his cast, though, and Arthur was actually looking forward to hearing how well things went at the hair salon when Curt got back. And while he was gone, Arthur was going to make a few phone calls, see if he could suss out if any of the locally-based magazines might be willing to let him do some freelance writing for them…

Not long after Phil was gone and Curt was finally properly dressed, Curt turned off the television (which had been on, unwatched, the entire time), and looked at Arthur. “Okay, this seems like as good a time as any. Let’s go.”

“Go?” Arthur repeated.

“To the salon.”

“Um…” He bit his lip uncomfortably. “Is there…a reason for me to go with you?” Curt wasn’t _really_ going to try to make him into his valet, was he? That was completely insane.

Curt blanched for a moment, then gestured angrily. “Well, if you don’t _like_ hanging out with me, then—”

“No, Curt, of course that’s not it!” What in the world had him so upset? “I just didn’t realise—I don’t mind goin’ with you, of course I don’t mind. I just hadn’t expected you’d want me to, that’s all.”

Curt stared at him sullenly for a moment, then turned towards the door. “Let’s go, then.”

As Arthur followed Curt out of the flat and into the lift, he tried to tell himself that this was normal. That Curt was just falling back into his old habits from the height of his career, when he went everywhere with an entourage. No matter how many times he told himself that, however, he didn’t manage to believe it. Especially when it turned out Curt was planning on _walking_ to the salon. Something was definitely off, but Arthur wasn’t sure quite what. Maybe it was just because Tommy/Brian had come over. Yes, surely that had to be it, didn’t it? The encounter with what was left of the love of his life had left Curt out of sorts and wanting companionship. Or perhaps specifically wanting people around him who would encourage him _not_ to go back to Brian now that he was Tommy. That, too, made a great deal of sense…

Arthur felt uncomfortable the minute they walked into the salon. He and Curt were literally the only adult men in the entire place. There was one little boy, playing with toy cars as his mother had her hair done, but everyone else was female. Arthur wasn’t sure he’d ever been around quite that many women at once. The notion definitely gave him gooseflesh, but what could he do about it? Curt seemed completely at ease, after all, so maybe he was just overreacting.

“Oh! Curt!” An older Asian woman hurried over, and gave him a light hug. “We were all so worried about you!”

“Hey, I’m indestructible, you know that.” Curt grinned for her, but it was painfully artificial to Arthur’s eyes. The old woman didn’t look terribly convinced, either.

“What brings you here today? Your roots aren’t showing yet.”

“Yeah, I can’t really wash my hair like this,” Curt said, gesturing to his left arm. “I was hoping one of your girls could just give me a quick wash.”

“Of course! Station six is open. You go on and sit down. If no one’s free, I can give you the wash myself.”

“Thanks.” Curt headed over to the one open chair in the main section of the salon, and sat down. While the old woman started fussing over him, Arthur sat down in the waiting area, hoping it wouldn’t take long.

He had almost given up looking through the piles of women’s fashion magazines (in the hopes of finding a news magazine, or at least a copy of _Rolling Stone_ , in there somewhere) when the door to the salon opened, and a woman who smelled of too much make-up and perfume stalked in on six-inch stiletto heels. Underneath the make-up, Arthur estimated that she was probably in her late forties, or early forties if she’d led a particularly hard life before coming into the money that had paid for her absurd get-up. She wore a skin-tight designer dress in brilliant red, an exceedingly outré diamond necklace, and a little red hat trimmed in fur (despite that it was August). Everything about her clothing said that she had paid a fortune to look cheap.

She walked a few steps in and lowered her rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses so she could peer at the salon stations, especially the one where Curt was having his hair washed. “Predictable as always,” she said, with an unsettling smile that made Arthur fear the worst.

Just in case she really was up to something, Arthur got up and moved into her line of sight. “Can I help you?” he asked, trying to sound more menacing than he felt.

She looked him up and down carefully, lingering on his face. “I suppose you must be Curt’s new boyfriend,” she concluded, shaking her head. “He never learns.”

“Who do you think you are?” Arthur demanded. Well, he’d meant it to be a demand. He wasn’t sure it came out sounding that way at all.

The woman reached into her tiny cocktail purse and pulled out a business card, which she handed to him with a supercilious smile. The card read “Angelique Francais de Sauvage,” and gave a telephone number and an address in a particularly expensive area of town, as well as an odd job title that was probably a particularly obtuse euphemism for a call girl. Arthur, frankly, was far more hung up on the woman’s alleged name than he was on what she pretended her career was. Why in the world had she put “Francais” as her middle name? Was it a typo for Frances? Had she just heard the word used and didn’t know what it meant?

As she started trying to step around Arthur, his attention returned to the woman herself. Just what did she want from Curt? It sounded like she knew he was gay, so surely she wasn’t expecting him to become a customer. Especially given that she was _definitely_ older than he was. The stalemate as Arthur blocked her path was only broken when Curt’s voice suddenly spoke from just behind Arthur.

“What are you doing here, Angie?”

The woman pushed Arthur aside, her feigned class act dropped at last. “What do you think I’m here for?” she retorted, almost venomously.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have asked.” Curt shook his head. “If I had to guess…I don’t know, try and finish me off?”

“Is that really all you think of me?”

“You really want me to answer that?”

The woman let out a ludicrous pout, crossing her arms underneath her unnaturally large bosoms. “Mom’s been worried sick, and you treat me like some kind of monster for trying to check up on you?” Mom? This woman was Curt’s sister?

“I’d think she’d be worried about that fucker who shot me, not about me,” Curt said, shaking his head. “She’s the one who shoved me into the electric chair.”

“She was trying to _save_ you.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

Angie stomped one of her stiletto heels, probably leaving a hole in the floor. “After all the prayers she’s devoted to begging God to cure you of your sickness, to make you stop living in sin—”

“I don’t want a fucking whore telling me I’m living in sin!” Curt shouted, making Arthur wince as everyone in the room turned to stare at Curt.

Curt’s sister slapped him. Sounded like it was pretty hard. “I am not a whore! I’ve never taken money for sex!”

“Getting paid in furs and diamonds is still getting paid. You’re a whore.”

“I hate you!” To emphasize her point, she drove one knee into Curt’s crotch before running out of the salon.

Arthur caught Curt as he started crumpling, and helped him into one of the seats in the waiting area. “I’m sorry, I should have tried to interfere or—”

“Nothing you could have done,” Curt groaned. “She’s just a bitch. Always has been.”

“Probably better not to provoke her, then.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Arthur was still painfully aware that everyone was still staring at them, and gently suggested that they should leave as soon as Curt was feeling recovered from the blow. Curt didn’t seem to care that they were being stared at, but agreed to leave, saying he was hungry. That didn’t seem possible, given how much he had eaten at lunch, but anything to get them out of there!

Nothing was actually said on the way back to the flat about getting anything to eat—despite passing a couple of street vendors—nor did Curt head for the kitchen inside the flat. Instead, he gave Arthur a winning smile, and asked if he wanted to play a board game. “Um…okay…?”

Despite the lack of certainty in Arthur’s answer, Curt accepted it, and headed for the game room. As Arthur followed him, he couldn’t help wondering what was wrong. Curt was definitely acting oddly. Yes, Arthur didn’t know him very well, but this was entirely unlike his behaviour while he was in hospital, or what little of his behaviour Arthur had seen back in ’75. It didn’t even fit what little he had seen in February. And there was only so much of it that he could ascribe to Tommy Stone’s unexpected visit.

They spent most of the rest of the afternoon in the game room, and Arthur spent the whole time trying to figure out what was working this change on Curt, but he never did come to any conclusions.

***

As it got late and Curt found himself getting tired, he tried to well up enough sexual desire to feel sure he’d be able to get it up. That was why he’d asked Arthur to stay with him, right, so they’d get to fuck again, so if he didn’t…if he didn’t do it soon, it’d look like he was…fuck, who knows what it’d look like. It didn’t even matter what it would look like. If he just managed to get laid, he’d be fine. Curt was sure of that. Once he got over…once he was horny enough, he’d forget, and then everything would go back to normal.

It had to. He couldn’t keep living like this.

He tried to put on another porno, but Arthur was less than interested in it. In fact, he tried to leave the room, saying he’d rather read. Fuck that! Curt suggested that they go hang out in the hot tub instead, which was at least accepted, but not in a manner that was even a little bit sexy. Curt tried to heat things up in the hot tub, sliding close to Arthur and using his good hand to stroke his side and thighs and…it was half-hearted, and Arthur seemed to notice, because it didn’t have any effect on him.

Eventually, Curt gave up to the extent that he actually fell asleep in the hot tub.

He only woke up when Arthur started shaking his shoulder. “If you’re tired, you should be sleeping in bed,” he said, with a warm smile. “If we both fell asleep in here, we might drown.”

“Yeah.” Of course, Curt needed help drying himself off after—he’d practically needed help getting in and out!—which was yet another humiliation to heap atop this utter train wreck of a day. Once they were back inside in Curt’s room, Arthur started putting his clothes back on. “Don’t,” Curt said. “I’d—I’m sure I’ll—maybe in the morning we can—”

Arthur smiled, cutting off Curt’s attempts to find some way to make the claim that they were going to have sex believable. “Of course.” He gave Curt a brief kiss, but it wasn’t sexy. It was sweet and tender, but there was nothing arousing about it.

Curt settled into his side of the bed, and Arthur shut the lights off before going to the other side of the bed and lying down. Curt’s mind was racing through darkness long before the lights went off, though.

Was he ever going to be able to fuck again? This was the second night in a row he was sleeping in the same bed with a seriously hot guy—one he really wanted to fuck—a naked one at that!—and he wasn’t even a little bit aroused. Did getting shot in the arm fuck up your sex drive? Even when he was at his most fucked up with heroin in the early ‘70s, he’d had better luck getting in the mood than this.

Was he broken?


	7. Chapter 7

The second morning in Curt’s flat was slightly less awkward than the first. Slightly. As they were eating, Curt told him that the Rats would be coming over mid-morning to practice. Something about the way he said it made Arthur quite certain that any attempt on his part to leave the flat before they got there was going to be met with extreme resistance. Maybe Curt really was taking the whole valet notion seriously. Not that a valet—to Arthur’s limited understanding of how the upper class lived before he was even born—would normally have towelled off his employer after a bath. (And as much as Arthur would have liked to flatter himself that Curt was only making him do that because he thought it would be a turn-on, the utter lack of anything sexy about the proceeding—not to mention the utter lack of arousal on Curt’s part—rather forbade that conclusion.)

After breakfast, Curt settled in to watch television—didn’t he ever do anything else?—and Arthur installed himself at the telephone in the next room to see if he could find anyone who might be interested in buying freelance stories from him. By the time the Rats arrived, Arthur was getting tired of hearing the same answers over and over again. Virtually every single one of them said that they only took freelance stories on a case by case basis and never agreed to pay for a story that hadn’t been written yet (how did freelance writers pay for their living expenses while they were working on their stories?), most of them also said that they’d happily pay him for a blow-by-blow account of the attack and/or a tell-all about what had passed between him and Curt since then, and Arthur felt sure that all of them really meant what only one had the gall to come out and say: “We don’t hire gays.”

There was only one publication on Arthur’s list that he had yet to call after Curt and the Rats disappeared into the sound booth, and he was tempted to skip it, and instead call Lou and beg _him_ to agree to buy a freelance story. Still, calling Lou would be like giving up (especially since Lou had practically begged him to stay on at the _Herald_ , despite his having outed himself in print in such an idiotic manner), and the whole reason Arthur had left England in the first place was that he was tired of giving up. So he rang up that last news magazine.

“ _Weekly News_ , front desk. How may I direct your call?” a woman’s voice said on the other side of the line.

“Uh, yeah, I was hoping to talk to someone about the possibility of writing some articles as a freelance journalist,” Arthur told her.

“I see. Do you have any training in journalism?”

“Ah, well, not really, but I do ‘ave experience. I spent the last five years writing for the _Herald_.” As always, it irritated Arthur that he had to work so hard to pronounce _Herald_ correctly…

“I see, well then—oh! Oh, you’re the one who—oh, Mr. Nathan has been trying to reach you! Do you have any openings in your schedule to meet with him?”

“Er…yes…?”

“Please hold, and I’ll transfer you to his secretary so she can schedule a meeting!”

Before Arthur could figure out a way to ask if maybe she was mistaken about who he was, he was already listening to tinny recordings of rather sub-par ‘classical’ music. She had to have leapt to some strange conclusion, surely. Jeffrey Nathan was one of the wealthiest men in the country—if not on the whole planet—and surely had better things to do than waste his time talking to a mediocre journalistic failure like Arthur. Admittedly, Nathan was rather reviled by other millionaires for his liberal politics—he had donated the maximum legally allowed amount to President Carter’s re-election campaign, and was probably the only wealthy person in the country who had opposed Reynolds’ tax cuts for the rich—but surely that didn’t extend to supporting gay rights in the age of AIDS…

“Mr. Nathan’s office,” a different woman’s voice said into the phone, smooth and silky like the femme fatale in an old ‘40s movie. “Am I speaking to Mr. Stuart?”

“Um, yes!” It came out a bit more of a guilty yelp than as speech proper. “Yes, that’s me,” he added, trying to sound less like a moron.

“Mr. Nathan is quite busy this week, but I can just barely pencil you in for a lunch meeting this afternoon, if you’ll be available at a quarter to one.”

“Ye-yes, that would be, uh, that would be great, thank you.”

“Mr. Nathan usually lunches at the Chez Suzette,” his secretary went on. “Please be early, as he does not have time to waste.”

“Yes’m,” Arthur replied, nodding unconsciously. Good grief. What in the world was he going to wear? That place had a dress code a mile long. And probably buried in the fine print were rules against homosexuals and other ‘deviants,’ but since the owner was the one inviting him, he’d probably be all right…

“Very good, then. He’ll see you there.”

“Thank you,” Arthur said, mostly to the dial tone.

After taking several minutes to calm himself, Arthur headed deeper into the flat, to the door of the sound booth, which stood open. There wasn’t any practicing going on: the drummer had rolled up his pants leg and was in the process of removing the bandage off the gunshot wound to his leg. Not the most sensible use of anyone’s time, but Arthur wasn’t about to pass judgment. He knocked on the doorframe to get Curt’s attention. “What’s up?” was Curt’s only response.

“Um, I found someone who might give me a freelance position, but he wants to meet over lunch in a very classy place. I was hopin’ it’d be all right if I borrowed some clothes?” Arthur absolutely didn’t own anything nice enough. If he wore his own clothing he’d be kicked out for sure, despite having been invited there by the owner!

“Sure. Want my help picking it out?”

Arthur shrugged. “I don’t really think I need it, but I don’t mind a second opinion.” Outright saying ‘no’ seemed like a good way to invite another fit.

“You guys don’t mind, right?” Curt got up, without waiting for the Rats to reply. “Go on without me,” he added, looking at the drummer. “I’ve got bullet wounds of my own; don’t need to see yours.”

They left the booth together, and hadn’t gotten halfway to the bedroom before Curt was leaning back against the wall, clamping his eyes shut. “Curt?” Arthur moved closer, and set a hand gently on his shoulder, letting him feel the slight shudders passing through the other man’s frame. “It’s okay, love. You don’t—you don’t ‘ave to pretend.” Curt pulled him close with his good arm. His whole body was shaking, barely more than a tremor, but the close contact made it painfully apparent. “I’m sure you could ‘ave told him you didn’t want to see,” Arthur whispered, stroking Curt’s hair with one hand. “They’re your friends; they don’t want to upset you.”

They stood there in the hall long enough that Arthur had time to replay everything that had happened in the last few days over and over in his head. Curt’s behaviour since his discharge was starting to make an unsettling sort of sense…

A sudden burst of laughter from the sound booth broke them out of it, and Curt practically shoved Arthur away from him before hurrying on into his bedroom. By the time Arthur caught up to him, Curt was already standing in one of his massive walk-in closets. It was the one further from the bed, the one usually kept closed, and it seemed to contain all his concert clothes. “Where’d you say you were going?” he asked, as Arthur joined him.

“Chez Suzette.”

“Fucking hell.” Curt scowled at his clothes. “That’s a tall order. I’m not sure I have anything that conservative. Who the _fuck_ are you meeting with, anyway?”

“Jeffrey Nathan.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. Sort of.”

Arthur sighed. “I half expect to get turned away at the door by someone shouting ‘no fags’ at me.”

“Nah, they get way too many big shot Broadway types in there. No way they’ve got any anti-gay policies.” Curt laughed. “They’ve probably got a lot of pro-gay policies, in fact. Nathan’s bankrolled some big-time gay-produced shows.”

While that was moderately comforting news, it did nothing to get Arthur dressed for lunch at one of the most posh eateries in Manhattan.

“The real trick,” Curt said, after a minute or two, “is dressing you nice enough to be allowed into a place like that, without dressing you so nice you get mugged in the subway.”

“Not sure that’s possible.”

Curt sighed. “Yeah. You’d probably better take a cab.”

Arthur nodded, but the more he looked at the clothes in the closet, the more he was sure he wasn’t going to be allowed to set foot in the restaurant. He might be able to make do with his nicest pair of trousers, but a place like Chez Suzette was going to expect a coat and tie, even in August. Preferably a silk one. “Curt, maybe I should just call back and cancel,” Arthur said. “I don’t think there’s anything here that will—”

“The garment bag at the back,” Curt said. “That’ll do.”

Arthur didn’t even _see_ a garment bag from where he was standing. Moving all the way into the closet, he just barely found it, hidden behind Curt’s leather jacket and other heavy winter things. “What’s in here?” he asked, as he pulled the bag out.

“Only regular suit and tie I own,” Curt told him. “It’s for funerals, but…it’s the only thing in this whole fucking apartment that’ll get you into a place like that.”

“Funerals?” Arthur repeated. That was not—he’d _seen_ what Curt wore to the funeral of a rock star friend of his who had died a few years ago of a drug overdose. There was no way a mottled brown leather tux was going to fly at a place like Chez Suzette.

“Not that one,” Curt sighed, as though he could read Arthur’s mind. “This is the one I wear to AIDS funerals.”

“Oh.” Arthur hadn’t even realised Curt had been to any of that kind. Then again, no one liked to report on those in the first place. Opening the bag, Arthur found a perfectly normal, sombre black suit. “Do you ‘ave any colourful ties?” Arthur asked. “So it won’t look like _I’m_ on my way to a funeral?”

“Do I look like a man who owns more than one tie?”

Arthur laughed. “Sorry. Silly question, really. Suppose any of your neighbours will loan us one?”

Curt smiled. “Okay, _that_ I think we can arrange.”

It took them almost an hour, but eventually they did find one of the other tenants of the building who was home and willing to loan Arthur a silk tie in subtle shades of blue and green with a pattern similar to hound's tooth, only larger. It was a nice tie, and it worked beautifully with Brian’s emerald pin, but…even with that flash of colour, Arthur still looked like he was headed to a funeral once he was dressed in Curt’s suit. To the extent that the cabbie was surprised that he was taking Arthur to a restaurant and not to a church or a cemetery.

Manhattan traffic was slightly worse than anyone had been expecting—even the cabbie was surprised—so Arthur ended up about five minutes late to his appointment. He was still ushered over to the table, where Nathan was already eating his appetizer. Seeing Arthur, Nathan rose, and walked over to shake him by the hand. “I’d worried you changed your mind!” Nathan exclaimed.

“Er, no, sorry…traffic…”

“Of course, of course. Have a seat. Here, bring him a menu—no, wait, no time for that. Just bring him what I’m having,” he told the waiter, who scurried off to do his boss’s bidding. “So, you’re a hard man to get in touch with, Arthur—is it okay if I call you Arthur?” Nathan asked as he sat down, not having so much as slowed down in talking.

“Yes—yes, that’s fine,” Arthur said, sitting down himself.

“I suppose you’ve been busy finding a new place to live,” Nathan went on. “Seems someone else is living in your apartment now.”

“That was fast.” It also just figured that his former landlord had not actually had the telephone number for that miserable little flat changed. “And yes, I was evicted as soon as my landlord found out I was—”

“Yes, that does happen,” Nathan said, cutting Arthur off. “Been staying with friends?”

“I suppose you could call him a friend, yes.” Couldn’t really call him a lover. Not yet, anyway. But Arthur felt renewed hope that might still be in his future.

“So, is that his funeral suit or yours?”

If Arthur’s face wasn’t bright red, it was only because the tie was cutting off some of the blood flow to his head. “His,” he replied, though he wasn’t sure how audible it was.

“So, did your former boss tell you I’d been looking for you?”

“Wha—uh—no, I ‘aven’t spoken to Lou since I quit my job at the _‘Eral_ — _Herald_.”

“And you still called up for a job! It must be fate!”

While Nathan was laughing at his own pronouncement, the waiter brought Arthur a plate of hors d'oeuvres and a glass of white wine. The waiter told him what the food was as he was setting it down, but he only did so in French, so that didn’t help much. Or, in fact, at all, given that he said it so quickly and quietly that Arthur couldn’t even parse the words to try and _guess_ what they meant. The food didn’t particularly look like anything edible, and it mostly tasted like garlic, but Arthur felt compelled to make at least a decent show of eating it, lest he offend his host. “So…um…why were you lookin’ for me?” Arthur asked, after swallowing his first mouthful of unidentifiable food-like matter.

“I suppose, as a keen young journalist, you’re aware that my company’s bought out several weekly and monthly magazines that were on the brink of folding,” Nathan said.

Arthur nodded, though Nathan’s description was obviously not the one he was used to hearing. Gobbling up publishers whole was the more typical way of putting it. And many of them had been nowhere near bankruptcy when Nathan bought them. _Weekly News_ , in fact, had been on rather a meteoric rise when Nathan stepped in and bought its parent company.

“Well, a lot of people have speculated about why I’ve been doing that, and I can tell you right now that they’re both right and wrong in their theories,” Nathan said, with a chuckle. “It’s true that I want to maintain a healthy base of journals that will never knuckle under the censoring iron fist of Reynolds and his conservative ilk, but that’s not my primary goal.”

“Oh?” Arthur had always assumed that Nathan’s primary goal—like so many other ‘80s reinventions of the Bounderby archetype—was to make as much money as was humanly possible.

“I want to see them stay in business. Back when I was a boy—about the time you were born, from the look of you—when the newsstands were wall to wall with different publications. And there were so many more stands, too! You didn’t get these all-in-one magazines back then, either. You had dozens to choose from on each subject, and they kept to their own affairs. Music magazines didn’t run movie reviews, movie magazines didn’t cover war news, news magazines didn’t talk about popular music, et cetera. It was a genuine thrill going into a periodicals-only store and just exploring the aisles, seeing what other magazines there were out there, seeing what else people were so dedicated to that they had their own journal about it!” Nathan laughed. “Of course, like any boy, I loved to rifle through each month’s _National Geographic_ in the hopes of some ethnographic study that included topless native ladies—oh, but I guess you never did that, eh?”

“No, can’t say I did,” Arthur sighed. The entire example was such an appalling cliché. Nathan’s whole conversation was a walking demonstration of everything that Brian Slade and his followers had been rebelling against ten years ago…

“Well, no matter, no matter.” Nathan nodded, and downed the remaining half of his glass of wine at a gulp. “The fact is, it turns out this arrangement also helps to keep writers from burning out on me. Freelance journalists can be brilliant, but you can’t depend on them being available when you need an extra story. But with so many magazines under my aegis, I can keep a veritable stable of writers on salary, and move them from one magazine to another, as needed. And if there are topics they don’t know enough about—or topics they don’t want to write about—no sweat, because I have so many other places to send them, so many other stories that need writing. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

“Yes, I believe so,” Arthur said, smiling. “And you think I’d…make the cut?”

“After I heard about your final story in the _Herald_ , I had a look through the back issues, found a few other stories with your by-line,” Nathan said, nodding. “Your style could use some polish still, but your insight is keen. And I have to admit that I’m curious—that last article hinted you’d learned some secret about Brian Slade’s current situation.”

Arthur’s smile descended into a frown. “I can’t tell you that. I promised him I wouldn’t tell a soul.” Not so much promised as pleaded in terror that he would keep it a secret when Tommy’s thugs had detained him in the hallway while Tommy and Curt filmed their little set piece for the television cameras back in Curt’s hospital room, but the end result was the same.

Nathan sighed. “That’s too bad; I’d have loved to hear that. Well, maybe you can ask him to make an exception in my case?”

“I can try, but I wouldn’t expect him to agree.” In fact, Jeffrey Nathan seemed to be exactly the sort of man that Tommy and his protectors would especially wish to keep completely ignorant of Brian Slade's new identity.

“No matter, no matter. So, what do you think? Would you like to join my stable of writers?”

Arthur was not keen on being metaphorically reduced to a horse. And yet… “What’s the pay like? By the story, or by the word, or—”

“Monthly salary, whether you write or not. A man who can’t eat can’t write.”

That seemed almost suspiciously understanding. “Are all the stories assigned, or would I ‘ave the freedom to find my own?”

“It varies. If you take the job, you’ll go upstairs to the human resources office, and they’ll give you a questionnaire to fill out. Let us know your strengths and weaknesses, and any foibles or eccentricities that might enhance or interfere with your writing. From there, the editors and I will decide which magazines you’re best suited to working on. And any time you’re not actively working on a story we’ve assigned to you, you can pursue any leads you’ve got. Anything you want to write on spec, I’m sure I have a magazine that can take the story. And if I don’t…” Nathan shrugged. “Well, I’ve yet to see a story none of my magazines could handle.”

Arthur was quite positive he could easily write dozens of stories that not one of Nathan’s publications would touch with a ten foot pole. Not one of them would ever publish a story on gay rights, or an AIDS story that didn’t make out the homosexual community to be monsters willingly perpetrating the worst plague of the century (even though it was the homosexual community that was being wiped out by it), and they would all quiver with horror at the thought of a romantic story about two men in love with each other.

“But I’m still waiting to hear your answer,” Nathan said, pointing his fork at Arthur. “Do you want the job or not?”

Arthur smiled weakly. “It sounds like I’d be mad to refuse,” he said.

“Excellent! So, now that that’s settled, let’s talk,” Nathan said, using that same fork to spear the last bit of whatever-that-stuff-was off his plate. “I like to get to know my writers. Tell me all about yourself.”

***

By the time Arthur arrived at the _Herald_ ’s building, it was late enough that he wasn’t sure how many of his former co-workers would still be there. This was not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it might be best if no one was in the office other than Lou. It would streamline the process, if nothing else.

As Arthur approached the lift, the door opened and Mary stepped out. She smiled on seeing him, and hurried over. “Arthur, what are you doing back here, hon?” she asked, then looked him over. “Oh, no, don’t tell me your rock star friend didn’t make it? He seemed fine when you two were leaving the hospital!”

“Of course he’s fine. Why would—” Arthur stopped, grimacing. “I’m not dressed for a funeral,” he sighed. “Is Lou in? I needed to ask him a favour.”

“Yes, he’s in his office. Don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind and decided to come back? Middle of an election is a terrible time to be down a man.”

“I’m sorry, Mary. I’ve already accepted another job.” Not to mention that based on some of the jokes he had regularly heard from a few of the less evolved staff writers, Arthur was pretty sure he wouldn’t be _safe_ sticking around.

After a few more rather tired words along the lines of “we’re all going to miss you around here,” most of which Arthur didn’t believe in the least, he was finally free to board the lift and take it up to the _Herald_ ’s floor. He found the door to Lou’s office standing open, but still knocked before entering, more out of habit than anything else.

Lou smiled at him, and waved him inside. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’ve just been to the funeral of one of the victims, and so you’ve changed your mind, and want to come back to work.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Arthur sighed. “And I ‘aven’t been to any bloody funerals! It’s just the only suit I could get my hands on. Does it _really_ look that much like I’m headed to a funeral?” Admittedly, he’d taken off the pin and hidden it inside an inner pocket of the jacket (to make sure that even if he was mugged it wouldn’t be stolen), but he still had on the blue-green tie…

“It does. But what brings you here if you haven’t changed your mind? Did Murray reach you to tell you someone had been calling for you?”

Arthur shook his head, and sat down in the chair opposite Lou’s desk. “No, I ‘aven’t spoken to him. Did end up talking to the man who’d been looking for me, though.”

Lou frowned. “I suppose you took the job.”

“Yeah.”

“Then what could you want here? Surely he isn’t demanding a letter of recommendation when he was actively scouting you.”

“It’s more or less a freelance position; I can write what I want when he hasn’t got an assignment for me. And after givin’ it some thought, I wanted to write about what happened after all, but in a way no one else is writin’ about it. Maybe a way no one’s bein’ _allowed_ to write about it…”

Lou sighed. “Do you understand what you’re saying?”

“Yeah, I do. Someone’s covering the tracks of a murderer, and I want to know who and why. Whoever it is, they’ve got the power to silence the media. That just makes it more important to let the world know about it. Even if I can’t uncover who’s trying to hide the truth, if I can at least put the real story out there, that should be more than enough. Please, Lou, you must ‘ave accumulated some data on Johnson before word came down to leave the story alone. I’m just asking for that information. I’ll do the rest of the leg work. But it’s hard to start cold when half the data’s already been hidden away.”

“Why should I give the competition the help?” Lou countered.

“Half my column already got reprinted in the _Sentinel_ ,” Arthur pointed out, “with a readership twice the _‘Erald_ ’s. That must have brought in a good bit of change. But imagine if the ‘ole column is reprinted in _Weekly News_ , with readers all around the world. Think what a boost that would be!”

“Is that something you’re actually authorised to promise?”

It was, actually, a deal he’d already worked out with Nathan, but…close enough, right? “It is.”

Lou prevaricated a while longer, but eventually agreed, and handed over a small file folder full of information on Rick Johnson. Arthur thanked him profusely, and promised to do what he could to help out the _Herald_ from his new position. Not that he had any idea what he could do, precisely, but it seemed like the thing to say.

Getting back to Curt’s flat with the precious documents by the subway seemed like a rash idea, so Arthur decided to risk the expense of a second taxi ride. On the way back, he read over the pages within the folder with the most dedicated interest. The basic biographical information on Johnson was far more detailed than what had been released through the news media. The newsreaders had only given his occupation as ‘janitor,’ whereas the full report now in front of Arthur listed nearly a dozen jobs Johnson had been fired from in the last year, and while many were in fact janitorial, a couple others were security guards, and the first of them was actually an unspecified position with the police force itself. In all cases, the reason for his dismissal boiled down to his dangerously unstable personality. There was a long list (labelled as being only partial!) of his previous arrests, mostly for drunk and disorderly conduct, as well as numerous charges of assault, primarily against women. Who in their right mind would have ever sold a gun to a man like that?

The file listed his last two residences—both in the last year—and gave the names of almost two dozen women who it said were “associated” with him. That might have made them girlfriends, accomplices, relatives, the victims of his assaults, or just former acquaintances. Most of them seemed to be connected to either his jobs or his residences, so they were _probably_ the latter, but Arthur would have to speak to them to be sure. Assuming any of them _would_ speak to him.

When Arthur got back to Curt’s flat, he let himself in with the key Curt had lent him on his way out to go to the meeting with Nathan. He could hear the sound of one of the pinball machines going, so he made his way to the game room, but was surprised to find that it was only the Rats inside. They told him Curt was in the dining room, working on a song, but Arthur had left his folder in there, and the room had been empty. Well, he was surely around. Arthur decided not to look for him until after he’d changed out of the funeral suit.

It turned out he didn’t have to look for Curt, because he was sitting on the bed, looking at some papers. Arthur didn’t say anything to interrupt him until he’d changed back into his own trousers and casual knit shirt. Only then did he move over to the side of the bed, and look closer at the papers. They weren’t sheet music or lyric sheets. They were stories cut from newspapers.

“Curt…” Arthur sat down and set a hand on Curt’s. The story Curt was currently staring at was a listing of all the dead and wounded from the attack. “Maybe you should try to set it aside,” he suggested gently. “This isn’t healthy.”

“It’s my fault,” Curt said quietly.

“It’s not.”

Curt shot him an angry look. “That motherfucker wanted to kill me and everyone he thought was like me. How does that not make it my fault they’re dead?”

“It’s _his_ fault, and no one else’s. Except whoever sold him that gun.” Arthur tried to take the papers out of Curt’s hand, but he wasn’t letting go.

“If I hadn’t been there…”

“Curt, I don’t think you entered into his thought process at all,” Arthur assured him. “I was just readin’ about him. I think he’d ‘ave opened fire on the crowd no matter who was on stage. It’s really nothing to do with you.”

“That’s not what everyone else says,” Curt said, even as he released the papers, letting Arthur set them aside on the bedside table. “They said he—”

“I know what they said. And you and I both know it’s all rubbish. How could he ‘ave claimed to be actin’ on God’s orders when he’s not even a member of any church? It’s all the Reynolds publicity machine, trying to make the victims into the villains.”

Curt sighed. “Does it even matter? Everyone believes it, so it might as well be true.”

“I’m going to make sure they don’t keep on believin’ it,” Arthur said, turning Curt’s face towards his own. “I promise you that.”

“Yeah?” Curt smiled weakly, almost fearfully.

Arthur nodded, but instead of reassuring him with words, he leaned in for a kiss. He kept it soft and gentle, in case Curt wasn’t in the right frame of mind, but it was nicely reciprocated. At first.

Curt pushed him away. “I thought you went to a _French_ restaurant,” he said.

Arthur winced. “I’m sorry. I guess there’s still a lot of garlic on my breath.” He’d bought some mints as he headed to the subway after lunch, but they hadn’t really been strong enough.

Curt chuckled. “Maybe there’s a story in it: Chez Suzette trying to out-garlic the Italians!”

Arthur laughed. “Sounds like the scoop of the century,” he agreed. “The sordid scandal of under-the-table garlic sales!”

They were both laughing, and the atmosphere felt beautiful between them. It looked to Arthur like Curt might kiss him, despite the garlic, and he was torn between leaning in and shutting his eyes to encourage it, or staying where he was, lest he offend by having misconstrued the situation. It turned out not to matter, because a voice in the hall soon dampened the mood entirely.

“Hey, Curt, we’re gonna take off now.” It was one of the Rats. “I’m sure you—uh—you’ll be happier if we’re not around to overhear—um—get in the way of you two.”

“What’re you shouting from the hallway for?” Curt shouted back.

“I don’t wanna see anything, man. You know we’re okay with you being how you are, but that doesn’t mean we want to _witness_ it.”

Curt laughed a bit meanly. “No, come on in, really. Just ‘cause I’m balls deep in his ass is no reason to shout and bug the downstairs neighbours.” Arthur grimaced. That was not going to help the situation.

The Rat in the hall yelped, repeated his goodbyes, and the door to the flat was soon slamming behind them.

“Speaking of your downstairs neighbours,” Arthur commented, “they may ‘ave heard that.”

“Nah, they go outta town every weekend.” Curt shook his head. “I wouldn’t care if they _did_ hear it anyway. Not like they could get me evicted; I’m not renting. Besides, those fuckers used to be really noisy.” He paused, a thoughtful look on his face. “Okay, no, actually, that was the guy’s previous girlfriend. She was a real screamer. The new one seems pretty quiet.”

“Ugh. I hope their bedroom isn’t right below this one.”

“Nah, it’s under the game room. Oh, yeah, the game room…” Curt gently pushed Arthur aside so he could get up off the bed. “I gotta clean out the pinball machines.”

“Clean them out?” Arthur followed him as he left the room.

“I don’t like leaving the coins in them. Not sure they won’t rust or something. It’s not like I can replace those machines, you know?”

“I think it’d take a long time for quarters to rust, but they might do other things,” Arthur agreed. “Do you need help with it, or can you do it one-handed?”

“It’s no problem. Don’t treat me like an invalid.”

Arthur sighed. “Aren’t I supposed to officially be here working for you because there are things you can’t do without using both hands?”

“Yeah, but that’s stuff like dressing me and towelling me off after a shower, and cooking and cleaning and…okay, yeah, I suppose that does make me sound like a fucking invalid,” Curt sighed. “I’m never having you wipe my ass, though.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Unless I was the one who made it messy…” Not that he could quite imagine Curt allowing Arthur to top him, but he’d certainly leap at the opportunity if it was offered!

Curt laughed. “Cheeky!” His laughter petered out quickly. “Guess there’s really no need for that kind of wiping anymore,” he said. “Condoms keep it all contained, so there’s no mess.”

That was _too_ sobering, and just when things had been going so nicely! “Well, lubricant can leave a mess…?”

“I guess.” Curt still seemed quite down as he opened the coin door on the front of the ‘70s pinball machine, removed the quarters, and put them in the jar on the nearby shelf. He checked the other two machines and the video arcade cabinets, but evidently the Rats hadn’t used them. “Hey, did you check the mail as you came in?”

Arthur shook his head. “That hadn’t even occurred to me.” Of course, with that file folder in his hands, he wouldn’t have wanted to deal with anything else anyway.

“C’mon, we’ll go get it together. That’s something that needs both hands, so I’ll have to show you how to do it.”

“Curt, between New York and London, I’ve had to get my post that way for ten years. I know how.”

“Nah, it’s not the same,” Curt assured him, leading the way towards the front door. “My mailbox has a flaw that makes it really hard to open. I never got it fixed because you never know when some tabloid fucker is gonna come snooping around and try to get at my mail, hoping for something scandalous.”

Arthur grimaced. “I wish I could believe you were joking.”

On the ride down in the lift, Curt regaled Arthur with some likely spurious tales of just how far some of the vultures from the tabloids had gone in seeking salacious titbits about Curt’s allegedly hedonistic lifestyle. It was probably the lightest—and certainly the funniest—conversation they had had this entire time. At the bank of post-boxes for the building, Curt took his keys back from Arthur, and put the small key into the lock of his box, then had Arthur do the unlocking, carefully explaining the necessary technique, which involved pushing, lifting, and then switching from pushing to pulling with the final third of the twist of the key, which caused the post to start spilling out as soon as the door was opened. Even with his other hand ready to catch it, Arthur still ended up dropping some of it. (Hopefully only because it was a week’s worth.)

They didn’t really talk again until they had returned to the flat. “I suppose you’re gonna start going out to chase down stories tomorrow, huh?” Curt asked, his voice trembling slightly.

“I won’t if you’d prefer me to stay here,” Arthur assured him, alarmed by the vulnerable look in Curt’s eyes.

“No, I—I’ll be fine. We’ve got to work on getting ready for the benefit album,” Curt said, trying to smile. “Kevin’s still figuring out how to play without re-opening his wound. It got his pedal foot, you know?”

“I hadn’t realised that. I’m sure with all of you working together, you’ll come up with something.” Actually, Arthur had no idea what was even involved, but it seemed like the thing to say.

“Yeah, probably.” Curt looked down at the massive pile of envelopes that had emerged from his post-box. “I don’t wanna deal with this shit right now. What time is it?”

“Nearly five.”

“Wanna go out tonight?”

“Sure. Where did you want to go?”

Curt shrugged. “I dunno. I was just thinking…it’s been a long time since I was on an actual date.”

Arthur tried to keep from breaking out into too giddy a smile. “I’d love that.”

“What do you usually do when _you_ go on dates?” Curt asked. “I’m…kinda outta touch with what, well, _normal_ people do.”

“I don’t really ‘ave much experience at dating,” Arthur admitted. “After I broke up with Ray, it’s mostly been covert relationships. If we wanted to go out, we’d just meet up at a gay bar. But it was never proper dates. Didn’t seem safe.”

“Yeah. Well, fuck that! Everyone knows we’re—fuck, they think we’re _more_ than we are right now,” Curt sighed. “But I’d—I’d like to…” He shook his head. “Let’s take in a show,” he suggested.

“Sure. Like a movie?”

“Nah, a play. There’s this new comedy that opened—not a musical, just a play, an old-fashioned farce—on Broadway. It was apparently the biggest thing on the West End last year.” Curt shrugged. “Friend of mine said it was good. All the characters are straight, but at least there’s no gay jokes.”

“What’s it called?”

“ _Nothing On_ , or something like that.”

Arthur paused, thinking. “That sounds right. I think I saw a review of it in the _‘Erald_ , but I didn’t actually read it.” As someone who had no money even to go to the cinema, there was certainly no point in reading about major openings on Broadway.

Curt smiled. “Okay, it’s a date. We’ll dress up nice—but no ties or funeral suits—and give the paparazzi something to do.”

Arthur laughed, or tried to. He wasn’t keen on the idea of having his picture plastered on social pages and tabloids…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, to the best of my knowledge, the magazine-only stores and the era of nothing-but-single-focus magazines Nathan describes never existed. (Just in case anyone is wondering if I thought there ever was such a time.)


	8. Chapter 8

In retrospect, going to see a straight sex comedy was probably _not_ the best idea for two men on a date. It set the wrong tone. Especially considering it had only been chicks running around half-naked. Though at least the leading man did spend most of the play in his boxers. Wait, _was_ he the leading man, or was it the other guy? Well, he was the good-looking one, so that was all that really mattered, though it’d have been better if he’d also lost his shirt. Still hadn’t really been very romantic, in any case. Yeah, they’d spent a while kissing after they got back, but…well, Curt sure hadn’t been able to get it up. He wasn’t sure if Arthur had or not. He hadn’t _said_ anything about it if he had, and they hadn’t really been positioned right for Curt to tell without it being mentioned.

And yeah, they’d gone to sleep much closer together in the bed this time, but that was actually worse. Curt was now lying there having day-old garlic breathed on him, couldn’t roll over because Arthur had slung an arm forwards across Curt’s torso and it was so early that he’d have felt like shit if he’d woken Arthur up just to get away from his garlic breath. Why did he have to be breathing through his mouth the morning after he’d had an all-garlic lunch, anyway? That was just too much!

Somehow, Curt managed to drift back off to sleep, at least for a little while. He was awake again by the time the sun came up, and Arthur was still breathing garlic on him. He couldn’t have turned his head away at any time while Curt was asleep, either, given that Curt had been _dreaming_ about garlic. Curt still couldn’t move without waking him, either.

That became a non-issue when the telephone rang. Curt was glad of the excuse to sit up and get out of range of the garlic breath, so he was very quick to answer it; it had only barely gotten to the second ring. “Hello?” Given it was barely past six on a Sunday morning, he probably should have sounded a lot more pissed off, but that didn’t occur to him until after he’d said it.

“God will punish all sinners,” the voice on the other side of the line said. It sounded slightly muffled, as if they were putting a handkerchief over the mouthpiece like in an old detective movie. “You won’t always escape. The next martyr will send you to Hell, or AIDS will do its work to wipe homosexual scum from God’s clean earth.” The line went dead before Curt could even muster up any response.

He didn’t so much hang up the phone as throw the handset at the receiver, knocking them both off the bedside table. “Curt…?” Arthur’s voice was tremulous, even for him. “Was that…?”

“Some asshole,” Curt sighed, getting out of bed. “If those sanctimonious motherfuckers have gotten their hands on this number, I’m gonna hafta change it again. Pain in the ass.”

“Is that something that happens a lot?” Arthur asked, as Curt headed into the john.

“On and off,” Curt told him. “Look, don’t worry about it, okay? I’ll call Phil after breakfast, have him deal with it. He’s been saying I should get one of those answering machine things anyhow. He can get one today and set it up so we won’t have to answer the phone until after the number change has gone through.”

Curt was still peeing when Arthur came into the bathroom. “Was it—were they threatening you?” he asked. “You should report it to the police if—”

“Arthur, what do you expect to happen?” Curt asked, looking at him over his shoulder. “Yeah, sure, there’s laws about threatening speech, all that shit, but it’s a fucking phone call. Even if the phone company has records of who calls who and when, it’d be my word against theirs about what was said. And my word isn’t worth shit, because even if the cop or the judge or whoever _isn’t_ a homophobe, they’ll know my reputation as a brainless junky. And it doesn’t matter how much I tell them I’m sober now, or how much my rehab counselors tell them about how good I’ve been, or even how much blood work is done to show I haven’t touched heroin in years, they’re still gonna dismiss me as nothing but a drug addict.”

Arthur watched him sadly as Curt flushed the toilet and washed his hands. That look was even worse when seen in the mirror than it was seeing it directly. “Can you at least tell the police that you’re worried about further violence?”

Curt sighed. “I’m not worried. It wasn’t a phone call from someone who wanted to do the job himself. It was someone who wanted to voice his hate because he’s completely impotent to act on it.” It was hard not to wince at his own words. Why did he have to use the word ‘impotent’ of all things? That _wasn’t_ it—he wasn’t impotent! It was just…it had only been a few days…

“Well, do you mind if _I_ tell them I’m worried someone might try something?”

Curt laughed, and turned around to look at Arthur directly. “You can tell them that on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You have to promise you’re not gonna have any more garlic.”

Arthur’s face mottled red, and he clamped a hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled through his hand, avoiding looking at Curt’s face. “I didn’t—I’m not the one who ordered the food…”

“Well, if you have to eat with him again, make sure you _do_ order for yourself next time. And no garlic.”

Arthur nodded.

Curt decided to leave him to it in the bathroom, and went to the kitchen to see if there was anything around to have for breakfast. Thanks to Arthur’s decision to buy a ridiculous amount of groceries, there actually was, so he didn’t have to put clothes on and go down to the deli for a bagel or whatever. Good. Clothes were overrated. Besides, maybe if they both hung out naked for a while, then he’d manage to…

By the time the toaster was regurgitating the bread, Arthur had come into the kitchen, fully clothed. That put a damper on Curt’s imagination of how the morning was going to go, to the extent that he actually went ahead and got dressed after breakfast. How depressing to be fully clad first thing on a Sunday morning—and when there was a hot guy in his apartment, too!

The call to Phil was short and decidedly unsweet. At least Phil had been through this before; he knew the drill backwards and forwards, and knew all the people he’d have to get the new number to once the change went through. And he was fucking thrilled that Curt was finally agreeing to his demands about the answering machine. While Curt was still on the phone with Phil, Arthur came into the room and sat down near Curt.

“Are you going to expect me to go with you to your return visit tomorrow?” he asked. “Or will you be okay with someone else accompanyin’ you?”

Curt told Phil to hold on, then lowered the phone, hand over the mouthpiece. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“You ‘ave a return appointment with the surgeon tomorrow for him to check on your healing progress.” Arthur shook his head. “I’m surprised he didn’t want you to come back sooner, but…I wanted to get started on researchin’ my story tomorrow, so if you’d be all right with someone else goin’ with you…”

The room seemed colder and smaller somehow. Curt’s heart was trying to contract his whole body, sucking it in. “You’re…doing what?”

Arthur sighed. “I told you I’d be writin’ a story exposing the truth about the shooter. But I can’t write it without goin’ out to interview people who know him, who know what he’s like and what makes him tick. I want to start the interviews tomorrow, but you ‘ave an appointment first thing in the afternoon. I need to know if that will involve me, or if you’ll ‘ave someone else go with you to help out.”

“I…” What was he really asking? Did he think Curt was afraid to go by himself? He couldn’t think that, could he? No, maybe…maybe it was just because of that threatening phone call. He was worried that someone might attack if Curt went by himself. Yeah, that had to be it. “Lemme see.” He lifted the phone back up to his ear. “Hey, Phil, you open tomorrow afternoon?”

“What?” Phil was sharp as always. Curt had to explain it to him twice before he got it. “Of course I’ll make time to accompany you to the hospital,” he said when he finally understood. “It is part of my job to look after my star, after all.” That was bullshit. But Curt didn’t call him on it. No point in it.

After the phone call with Phil was over, Cut had to surrender the phone to Arthur so he could make arrangements to interview people over the next few days. Why was he going to go talk to so many people? Wouldn’t one or two tell him everything he needed to know? Talking to so many just opened up the possibility that every single one of them would say something different and then his story would fall apart and the world would keep thinking of that motherfucker as some kind of religious zealot, covering himself in the blood of the damned…

Trying to distract himself from Arthur’s impending abandonment, Curt put a movie into the VCR. He specifically picked the movie that was going to require the most concentration to watch, so he couldn’t be thinking of anything else: it was a classic screwball comedy where everyone spoke insanely fast…and it was German, so he had to concentrate on reading the paltry subtitles _and_ trying to piece together what they were actually saying with his weak, rusty German. That wouldn’t leave him any time to worry about anything.

The movie was almost over by the time the Rats arrived. Thankfully, they were willing to wait until it was over before they went to practice.

Well, of course they were…

***

By the time Arthur was expecting to hear Curt and the Rats emerge from the sound booth to demand lunch, he had already made considerable headway on his list of people to call. Most of them were in the telephone book, and evidently very few of them were church-goers, as there had only been a few who hadn’t answered. He was on the last of the “associates” now, an elementary school teacher named Rachel Hellas. She sounded almost afraid as she answered the phone.

“Is this Miss Rachel Hellas?” Arthur asked.

“Who are you?” Maybe not afraid, exactly, but there was something in her wariness that seemed more fearful than angry. Or maybe that was Arthur’s imagination?

“I’m Arthur Stuart,” he told her, “a journalist with the—er—a freelance journalist.” That was only, what, the tenth time he’d loused that up and almost said he was with the _Herald_? “I was hopin’ I could set up a time to interview you about Rick John—”

“How many times do I have to tell you people that—wait, what did you say your name was?” The change in her tone from rage to guardedness was abrupt, to say the least.

“Arthur Stuart,” he repeated, making sure to enunciate it just a little bit more clearly than usual, as he had been told (most recently by Mandy Slade) that he had a tendency to slur his words together when he was saying things he said by habit, like his own name.

“You’re the—um—the one who…the one I read about in the _Sentinel_?”

Arthur sighed. “Yes, that’s me.” Couldn’t at least _one_ of them have read the _Herald_?

“So you’re not one of _them_.”

“No, Miss Hellas. I’m trying to tell the story they’ve been suppressing.” She was only the eighteenth person he’d spoken to today who had started out assuming he was with some religious group trying to clear Johnson’s name…

A light sound, almost a brief laugh. “All right, I’ll let you interview me.”

“Thank you. Do you ‘ave any openings tomorrow?” The sooner he could get these interviews over with, the better.

“Hmm…how long will it take?”

“Well, that all depends on you, Miss Hellas. On how much you ‘ave to say about him, and how much of it you want to tell me. I won’t ask you to talk about anything you don’t feel comfortable with.”

A miserable, mournful laugh. “There’s nothing involving that monster that I feel comfortable with. But if you’re going to tell the world the truth about him, I’ll tell you as much as I can.” The line was filled with a silence long enough that Arthur began to wonder if he should say something else. “I suppose it…it might take a long time, or it might be pretty quick. We’re already at work every weekday, developing on the lesson plans for next month, but we do get long lunch breaks. If you come by at noon, it won’t be hard to find an empty classroom where we can talk. But we’ll only have an hour.”

Arthur agreed gladly, feeling that familiar stirring of excitement at the certainty that he was on his way to uncovering a big story. Not that any of them had ever _actually_ turned out to be big (except the one story that those prats on the evening news managed to stumble across the day before his story appeared on the streets), though he was convinced that if he’d been allowed to write the story about Tommy Stone actually being Brian Slade, it would have been _enormous_. Unfortunately…

Just that one passing thought about that story lodged the injustice of it in Arthur’s throat, and it stayed there all through lunch. Having the story cancelled wouldn’t bother him if he hadn’t managed to uncover the truth. If all he’d had was the story of Brian Slade’s life up to the end of his career, having the story cancelled would have probably been a relief. No, that wasn’t true. If it had been cancelled before he’d learned just what Brian’s new identity was—that he even _had_ a new identity—it would have made Arthur even more curious. At least, it would have if it had been clear that Lou had been coerced into cancelling it. _Technically_ , Arthur didn’t actually know that anyone had talked Lou into cancelling the story…and maybe if he hadn’t been re-assigned to review a no-longer-Brian-Slade concert, he might have even had a few doubts still. But as it stood? It was obvious.

How many other stories had been quashed to protect that secret? Did they routinely force the cancellation of every story that investigated Brian Slade’s current whereabouts? Or did they have some reason to think Arthur was more likely to discover the truth? If they did, it suggested alarming things about just how much Tommy Stone’s organisation— or his corporate underwriters, or the Committee for Cultural Renewal—knew about Arthur’s past. After all, if he hadn’t known what Shannon Hazelbourne looked like thanks to seeing her in numerous behind-the-scenes photos, he might never have pieced together the truth. Not without a lot more time or the ability to break into classified government files.

Even after Curt and the Rats returned to the sound booth to keep rehearsing, Arthur kept pondering. What might have been. What it meant that none of it came to pass. How many forces might still be aligned against him, against Curt, against the truth itself…

He was still pondering when someone rang the bell to the flat. Since it seemed unlikely that Curt would hear from inside the sound booth, Arthur went to answer the door. And—as if Arthur’s thoughts had summoned him like the alien demon he used to be—it was Tommy Stone on the other side of the door.

“You’re still here,” he said, glaring coldly at Arthur.

“Will be for some time,” Arthur informed him, trying to keep his voice level. How had he gotten here? Having his former idol treating him as an object of hate and disgust…this was never the fate he wanted for himself!

Tommy shook his head. “I told Curt he should hire a real nurse. But are you going to let me in, or must we do this in the doorway?”

Arthur winced. “Sorry,” he muttered, more by reflex than anything else. He stepped aside, letting Tommy into the flat, then shut the door behind him. “A nurse would never answer to his needs,” he added, trying to clarify that he hadn’t been apologising for his presence, just for his rudeness in blocking the door.

“There are some highly specialised nursing services out there, if a man knows where to look,” Tommy said, with a callous laugh. “And Curt would be better off with one of them.”

“I doubt that.” Curt’s needs weren’t medical. “If you’re here because you’ve finished writing that song, Curt’s in the sound booth.”

“That can wait.”

Exactly the words Arthur didn’t want to hear.

“First, you are going to tell me just what you plan to accomplish with this…caretaker ruse,” Tommy said, leaning in closer.

“I plan to help Curt recover from his injuries. It was his idea.”

Tommy laughed sharply—no, it was almost more of a snort. “I’m sure you made him think it was, yes. Let me guess, you plan on suing him after he’s through with you? Like that boy who’s suing Liberace.”

Arthur grimaced. “I’m not a sponge—and I don’t expect anything from Curt, not so much as a kiss, let alone anything else. If he’s willing to enter into romantic or sexual relations with me, it’d make me very happy, but I don’t expect it, and even if it happens, I don’t expect it to last. I know I’m not good enough for him.”

Tommy leaned back again, one eyebrow raised. “Well, if you really understand that, perhaps this arrangement can be allowed to persist for the moment.” A cold smirk. “But you understand you will have to sign papers. I’ll have my lawyer draw them up.”

“Papers?” Arthur repeated. “Are you serious?”

“Very. Curt is more vulnerable than usual at the moment. I won’t allow you to bring him harm.”

“Bit late for _you_ to be worryin’ about that, isn’t it? There’s not much I could do to him that you ‘aven’t already done.”

Tommy’s face contorted in anger so rapidly that Arthur took a step backwards, alarmed. “You are going to sign legal, notarised documents swearing that you will never attempt to force Curt into any extension of intimacy, nor will you demand so much as a single penny from him, or I will use every ounce of my influence over the local officials and have you locked up!”

“On what charges?” Arthur’s mouth asked, before his brain could catch up to it and tell it to keep shut in the name of all that was good in the world.

“I’ll have them find something particularly _effective_ ,” Tommy assured him, with a terrifying smile. “Something that will keep you away from Curt for the rest of your life. Better yet, something that will make him despise you…”

Any impulse to defend himself wilted within Arthur at the idea of Curt hating him. Curt having no sexual interest in him was one thing—that was only to be expected—but hate…? Arthur couldn’t bear the thought of it; it was worse than the idea of spending the rest of his life in prison. “Since I ‘ave no intention of doing any of those things, there’s no reason for me not to sign,” he said, without looking at Tommy’s face. That probably made it look like he was lying, but he just couldn’t do it. Every ounce of courage he had thought he had grown in the last ten years had evaporated like so much mist, leaving him every bit as weak and cowardly as the child who had barely been able to ask his brother for a few measly quid to buy a record, and had cried uncontrollably at his father’s rage…

Tommy didn’t acknowledge Arthur’s surrender, except by walking over to the telephone and calling someone, asking to have the legal paperwork delivered to him before he left Curt’s place. He certainly moved quickly.

Maybe it only made sense he was worried. It must have looked suspicious on the outside. Maybe it was the norm for a fan who pursued romance with a star to turn out to be more of a threat to the star than a companion. Like those girls who had brought up paternity suits against Curt, claiming that a one-night stand with him had left them pregnant. Of course it must have seemed like Arthur had to have ulterior motives that were far less wholesome than simply hoping for another chance to be with Curt. Any love for Curt that still lingered in Brian’s heart had to be screaming out in fear on seeing someone as suspicious as Arthur in Curt’s life.

Arthur spent most of the afternoon wondering if he should say something to reassure Tommy that nothing was going to happen: last night had made it plainly apparent that despite Curt’s attempts to feign interest, he had less than no desire for Arthur. Of course he didn’t. Arthur wasn’t exactly the most interesting man on the planet—he liked to think he wasn’t the most boring, either, but he knew he was well worse than average—and though sometimes people still claimed to find him attractive, he knew he’d lost whatever looks he’d had as a teenager. But that was okay. As long as he could see Curt through this rough patch, that was all that mattered. Maybe they could at least be friends when it was all over.

Whatever was going on in the rest of the flat, it must not have been music practice in the sound booth, because when the doorbell sounded, late in the afternoon, both Curt and Tommy were soon headed towards the front door. Arthur had gotten there first, though, letting Shannon Hazelbourne inside with a large envelope, which she gave to Tommy, after casting a look of disgusted hate at Curt.

“What’s that?” Curt asked, either oblivious to or unconcerned by Shannon’s hatred of him.

“Some papers your little friend here is going to sign,” Tommy told him.

“The fuck?” Curt grabbed the envelope out of Tommy’s hands, pulled the papers out (an awkward process with only one hand!), and started looking over them. “What the fuck is this?”

“It’s a very complicated legal document,” Shannon said. “You won’t be able to understand it.”

“I’m not a fucking moron,” Curt snarled at her. “I can see what it is. What I wanna know is why you’re trying to force Arthur to sign this shit!”

“It’s standard procedure,” Tommy claimed, smiling warmly. It was almost Brian’s smile, and it made Arthur’s heart hurt to imagine what that sight must be doing to Curt. “Just a simple precaution.”

“This is the equivalent of a fucking pre-nup,” Curt said, crumpling the papers in his fist. “Who the fuck does things like this? Who’d even _think_ of something like this?”

“It’s a very common—” Tommy started again.

“Maybe you assume everyone around you is gonna turn out to be a gold-digging whore, but that’s just _you_.” Curt shook his head. “This is bullshit.”

“He already agreed to sign it.”

Curt looked at Arthur with disappointment. “Why would you agree to that?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I’m not plannin’ on forcing you into anything or extorting money from you. And if it will make certain other parties less liable to frame me for ghastly crimes…”

Curt cast a glance over at Tommy and Shannon, then threw the papers in his hand into the rubbish. “Don’t sign it. Don’t let him bully you like that just ‘cause he’s fucking jealous.” Without another word, he disappeared back into the recesses of the flat.

Shannon fished the papers out of the bin, and flattened them out before presenting them to Arthur with a flat little smile. “Framing won’t be necessary,” she told him. “Our private detective has found enough evidence to ensure you spend at least twenty years in prison for things you _did_ do.”

“Wh-what did I ever…?” Arthur couldn’t think of _anything_ he’d ever done that was as illegal as all that. Back in the ‘70s he had partaken of various illegal substances, of course, but surely no one could be incarcerated in New York for taking drugs in London ten years earlier…

“All your sexual activities between your arrival in this country in November of 1978 and the passage of new laws in 1980 were—”

“But they can’t prosecute me for that _now_!” Arthur insisted.

“There is evidence,” Shannon told him. “And it was illegal at the time.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Arthur sighed. “If that’s all you—”

“And there are certain drug-related offenses that—”

“Not in this country!”

Shannon smiled, shrugging her shoulders. “He said he had a photograph of you smoking marijuana.”

“Uh…yeah…maybe…but that’s…in a photograph, you can’t tell marijuana from tobacco. Not every hand-rolled cigarette is illegal.” Arthur shook his head. “And even if there was a credible witness to swear to it, it’s a slap on the wrist offense.”

“Yes, I’m sure they’ll take much more harshly to the numerous counts of breaking and entering.”

“What?”

“About a year ago, you did a series of stories on corruption in the construction of housing projects in lower income neighbourhoods. He uncovered considerable evidence that you entered the construction sites illegally, sometimes breaking holes in fences to gain access.”

Arthur bit his lip, looking down at his feet. He didn’t know, off-hand, what the statute of limitations on something like that was. Probably a good five to ten years. He doubted he could really be locked up for twenty years over something like that, but…it wasn’t the only time he’d done something a bit questionable in the pursuit of a story. (How could he not? Fictional journalists did that sort of thing all the time! Everything he had ever been exposed to had trained him to think of that as completely normal—necessary, even!) He took the papers out of Shannon’s hands. “I was already planning to sign it. You didn’t ‘ave to send someone to dig up dirt on me.”

Shannon laughed. “He’s been investigating you for the last six months.”

Arthur winced. Of course he had been. They had to be prepared in case he went public with what he knew. Trying to pretend he wasn’t cowed by their thorough preparations to destroy his entire life, Arthur looked over the papers he was being expected to sign. It was essentially a sworn statement forgoing any right to seek financial remuneration of any kind or to make any attempt to extend relations personal or professional, accompanied by a very rigidly defined non-disclosure agreement, which outlined all the ways in which it was absolutely forbidden for Arthur to talk to anyone about any time he spent with Curt. “You really expect I’m going to write a sleazy tell-all book?” Arthur asked, looking at Tommy with disbelief. “Who would buy a book like that—no, who would even agree to _publish_ it?”

A tightly controlled smile. “Except for the names at the top, that is the standard contract anyone spending large amounts of time with me has to sign,” Tommy said. “I know you understand all too well why I must insist on forbidding any disclosure of information learned in my presence.”

“Uh…yeah…but…do you really make people sign this?”

“Of course. I’m told it’s not uncommon.”

“By whom?” Arthur asked. “Who the bloody hell thinks this is common?”

“The president.”

A slight cough escaped Arthur’s lips unbidden. Why was President Reynolds giving Tommy Stone such bizarre advice? Just how close were they? Not that Arthur actually wanted to know the answer… “I’ll sign the part you’re actually concerned about,” Arthur said, “but I’m not signing this non-disclosure rubbish. The way this is worded, I wouldn’t be able to write about the attack on the concert—or if we come up with some good technique to help his arm heal, I wouldn’t be allowed to tell anyone how we did it. I’ll gladly sign the rest of it.”

Tommy looked at Shannon, who frowned. “I don’t like the loopholes that leaves,” she told him, “but we can bring another document promising silence on certain matters pertaining to you.” Tommy nodded, and Shannon took the papers back from Arthur, striking out the non-disclosure part of the document, then signing her initials next to the strike marks. “Now sign it,” she said, handing it back.

“Don’t we need a notary to witness me signin’ it?” Arthur was not going to let a legal loophole land him in hot water later on…

“Shannon is also a notary,” Tommy informed him.

That seemed to Arthur to be taking dedication a little too far, but he didn’t bother saying so. He just accepted the proffered pen and signed the paper. “But you understand,” he said, handing it back, “that no matter what you ‘ave me sign about your secret, if you get me arrested for anything that detective of yours dug up, I _will_ tell the world the full truth of just where they need to look to find Brian Slade.”

“I suppose that’s an equitable trade-off,” Tommy said, but he sounded disappointed.

Was he that jealous of anyone else coming near Curt, or did he just hate knowing that Arthur had discovered his secret?


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **VERY IMPORTANT WARNING**  
> I forgot to tag this (and I will go back and do that immediately) but this chapter contains the discussion of stalking and sexual assault. If you would be triggered by that discussion, please do a search-find in the chapter for the *** that indicates the break in the two scenes and skip the first scene.

Neither of his interviews on Monday morning had been very long (there were only so many ways to say “I was scared of him so I tried to keep away”), so Arthur arrived at the school about half an hour early. It was a very posh school for the children of the wealthy—the kind of school that Americans confusingly called a private school. He’d been hanging about uncomfortably in the neighbourhood of the front gate when a gardener spotted him and started asking suspicious, accusing questions.

“I’ve got an appointment to speak with Miss Hellas,” Arthur finally explained, worried that the man was going to call the police.

The gardener didn’t seem to believe him, but agreed to go get her and see if she could corroborate Arthur’s story. He soon returned with the woman herself in tow. Rachel Hellas was young for a teacher—about Arthur’s age, as far as he could tell, or maybe even a few years younger—and extremely pretty; apart from the somewhat out-of-control masses of brown curls, she could pass for a model easily. The gardener looked at her piercingly as she regarded Arthur. “Do you know this man, Miss Rachel?” he asked.

“The photos in the newspaper were a little blurry, but I believe he’s the man I’m expecting, yes,” she answered.

The gardener didn’t like that answer any, and went away grumbling under his breath. “I’m sorry I’m early,” Arthur said. “I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get here.” That seemed a better explanation than that he’d had more time than expected and nowhere else to go.

“It’s all right,” she assured him, then led him inside to an empty classroom. “I’m still new here, so no one’s quite sure how to treat me,” she said, sighing as she sat down. “The staff mostly treat me like a helpless waif to be protected, and the faculty act as though I was wearing a red A on my chest.” She paused, then smiled uncomfortably. “Oh…is that too American a reference for—”

“I took a course on American literature at university,” Arthur assured her. “I’ve read all the major classics.” To whatever small extent America could be said to _have_ classics. Of course, Arthur had primarily taken it to help him understand any subtle little references in the lyrics of American rock songs… “Would you like to get started with the interview, Miss Hellas?” he asked, getting his notebook out of his satchel. “Get it over with?”

“You can just call me Rachel.” She bit her lip. “As much as I’m about to tell you, I…it will feel even more awkward talking about it if you’re treating me like a stranger.”

“Of course.” Arthur nodded. “Where would you like to begin?”

“Well…I suppose…at my old teaching job.” Rachel sighed. “I was teaching the second grade at a public school on the lower east side. It wasn’t as nice as this, but I felt comfortable there. I got on well with my students, and the other faculty were some of best friends I’d ever had.”

Arthur nodded. “And then Rick Johnson was hired as a janitor?” he suggested, since it matched one of the jobs listed in Lou’s file.

“That’s right,” Rachel said, her voice choking in her throat. “At first, it wasn’t a problem. Janitors are…well, they come in all types. Some of them are as sweet as honey—the janitor here, for example, is a lovely old man, like everyone’s grandfather. Some of them resent that they have to clean up after children who treat them badly. You get to know what kind of janitor you have, and rely on or avoid him accordingly.”

“What kind of janitor was Johnson?”

Rachel shut her eyes. “At first…he seemed like a good one. He was very attentive, always coming by my classroom to ask if I needed anything.” She opened her eyes again. “I would hear him making similar queries at the classroom next door, too, so I thought he was simply very conscientious, even if he tended to snap at the children.” She shook her head. “Then I heard some of the male faculty talking about him, and I realised it was only the two of us who got all that attention. Me and Lisa.”

“Ah…there was a Lisa on the list I was given,” Arthur said, wondering if he should dig through his satchel for it. “I couldn’t get in touch with her.”

“She took a job in a small town in Massachusetts to get away from him,” Rachel said. “You won’t be able to reach her easily.”

“I see.” Well, at least that was one name to scratch completely off the list. “What happened?”

“He…at first it was little things. He would bring us little presents of flowers or candy. I didn’t want to accept them—I refused them, in fact—but he just left them on my desk when I was out and wouldn’t take them back. It was the same for Lisa. That was how it started. Then he started asking us out. That was awkward, but he seemed to take it well, at first.” A choking sound deep inside her throat. “Then came the day when Lisa turned him down by explaining she had a date with someone else.” Rachel paused long enough that Arthur wondered if he should say something. “I don’t know if it was truly a psychotic fit, but that seems like the easiest way to describe it. He seemed convinced that Lisa and I belonged to him because he had given us so many presents. He took Lisa’s date with someone else as a betrayal, and started ranting that he’d kill any man who came between them.”

“How did the school’s administration react to his behaviour?”

Rachel looked down at her hands. “They blamed Lisa. Said we’d been leading him on by accepting his presents—even though we didn’t accept them!—and that we were setting a poor example for the children by taking his gifts and then turning around and dating other men. They didn’t outright forbid us from dating, just made it clear that we’d have to do it in secret if we wanted to have love lives with anyone other than that monster.”

“What did you do?”

“I was already frightened, after seeing the fit he had about Lisa’s date,” Rachel said. “Much too frightened to try dating while he was still around. But Lisa was really serious about the man she had scheduled that date with—they even tried to have a real relationship. But he—Johnson—he started stalking her. And some days he would skip work to follow her boyfriend around town and threaten him. He…the police said there was no proof, but…he tried to push Lisa’s boyfriend onto the tracks in the subway, right as a train was coming…”

“Bloody hell…”

Rachel just sat there a moment, her composure visibly eroding. “Lisa’s boyfriend broke up with her over it. Whatever he’d been told…he thought Lisa was two-timing him with that psychopath. Once he was out of the picture, Johnson started pursuing her even more determinedly. He would follow her into the faculty restroom, even force the lock open on the bathroom stall.”

“If it’s too hard to talk about, you don’t ‘ave to,” Arthur told her, as Rachel started trembling. “I know you’ve suffered. I don’t want to make it worse.”

“No, if you don’t hear it from me, you won’t hear it at all. And then you can’t tell the world about it.” Rachel clenched her fists, and seemed to be fighting tears. “I don’t honestly know what he did to her. Lisa wouldn’t tell me. I think…I think he raped her, but…how could I have asked her to talk about it?” She shook her head. “Whatever happened, she quit her job and left town over a single weekend. She was crying the last time I saw her, and apologised to me, saying that now he’d be after me.”

“Was he?”

Rachel nodded. “It wasn’t quite as bad, but yes, he started spending all his time coming by my classroom or my office, asking if there was anything he could do for me, asking me on dates…” She shook her head. “I was terrified of what he was going to do if I kept refusing, but I was even more afraid of what would happen if I accepted.” A bitter sigh. “To be honest, I started sending out my résumé within days of Lisa’s departure. I was lucky enough to find this position, and to be interviewed by a female member of the Board of Directors. When she asked why I hadn’t included a letter of recommendation from my old school, I was able to tell her the truth, and she understood. She said she would keep it confidential, but based on the way I'm treated, I think the story got out somehow.”

“I’m not sure I understand. Why couldn’t you get a letter of recommendation? Surely the headmaster wouldn’t ‘ave taken Johnson’s side so far as to lie in a recommendation?”

Rachel laughed weakly. “No, I don’t think he would have. But I was terrified that if I got a letter of recommendation, then he’d find out where I was going and follow me. This way, I was able to lie to my old school and say I was simply retiring, leaving town like Lisa had. It meant cutting ties with all my friends there, but it also meant that I haven’t had to deal with him again. I suppose that makes me heartless, leaving him out there to attack other innocent girls…”

“Not at all,” Arthur assured her. “You had to protect yourself. No one can blame you for that.” Ordinarily, he might have suggested that she should have reported him to the police, but what good would that have done in this case? She wasn't even the one who had been attacked, and even if she had been, how many other times had Johnson been taken to court and walked free on similar charges?

“Thank you.” She smiled at him so warmly that Arthur felt like she really was relieved by his words.

“Did anything he ever said or did in your presence suggest a possible motivation for attacking the concert?” he asked, after a few minutes’ pause. “Any particular hatred he might ‘ave been acting on?”

“I can’t think of anything specific,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “He seemed to hate everyone he didn’t want to have sex with, and to hate women who refused to have sex with him even more.” She chewed on her lip a moment. “I’m sorry. I suppose that’s not a very useful answer.”

“It does leave a gaping hole, but it would be worse to ‘ave false information,” Arthur assured her. “Everyone else I’ve spoken to this morning came to the same basic conclusion.” General hatred of humanity wasn’t particularly punchy in an article, but if it was the case it was the case, and what could he do about it? At least it was something that was impossible to glorify or spin as a positive. 

He continued the interview a while longer, but there didn’t seem to be much left to learn from her, so Arthur gently ended the proceeding. “If you don’t mind, can I give you the telephone number where I’m staying? In case you remember anything else that might be useful.” When Rachel nodded, he started writing Curt’s phone number, then stopped. “Ah, no, that’s no good. It’s changin’ after today.” Or at some point soon, anyway. Arthur wasn’t sure how long that sort of thing normally took, but considering a rock star’s safety was at stake—and a star who’d so recently been the victim of a murderous attack, at that!—it probably wouldn’t take long. “Well, I’m writing this story for _Weekly News_ , so if you need to get in touch with me, you could call and leave a message with the desk there. If you…if you think there’s any chance Lisa would talk to me over the telephone, contact her, ask her if she’d agree to it, and let me know there, too.”

“She won’t,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “If she was willing to talk about him, she already would have talked to the papers where she is.”

Arthur nodded. He’d figured as much, of course, but…he’d had to try. He thanked Rachel for her help, then made his way back to the subway to reach his next interview, after a brief break for lunch. None of the others had asked for specific times, so he had plenty of time while he was eating to go back over his notes. So far, he had interviewed three people, and all of them had left him with the same basic message: they hadn’t been surprised that Johnson had opened fire on a crowd of people, and all of them agreed that he was neither religious nor especially homophobic. His article probably wouldn’t be able to provide a concrete reason why Johnson had become a mass murderer, but it would at least firmly disprove the ludicrous tale being spun by the religious right and the conservative voices in the mass media. As much as he wanted his article to explain why people had been covering up for Johnson, he didn’t realistically see any way it could, other than speculation, which was best avoided.

His afternoon interviews were equally brief, and closer together, letting him get through six more. He had time, actually, to conduct at least one more—several more if he kept going past the dinner hour. He couldn’t take it, though; Arthur was too close to the story, and it was wearing on his nerves. The sounds of the attack—the gunshots, the screams—were ringing in his ears the whole time he was interviewing the last woman, another co-worker that Johnson had been harassing in an attempt to enter into a sexual relationship with her.

By the time Arthur returned to Curt’s flat, he was looking forward to heading to the sound booth—it was still afternoon, after all—and listening in as Curt and the Rats practiced. A live Curt Wild performance should serve both to cheer him up _and_ drive out the sounds that were haunting him. To his surprise, as he headed back that way, Arthur heard beeps coming out of the game room. Glancing through the open door, he saw a young girl—eight or nine years old, perhaps—sitting on the floor in front of the television, playing a game on the Atari system, with a small pile of envelopes beside her.

Confused and not wanting to alarm her, Arthur kept going to the sound booth, but found it empty. Instead, he found Curt lying back in bed, reading a book. Arthur hesitated in the doorway, wondering what was going on, until Curt got to the end of a page, and started an awkward process to turn the page without using his left hand at all. “There _are_ bookstands for this kind of thing,” Arthur sighed, entering the room. “I’ll pick you up a couple of types tomorrow, shall I?” He had been provided with a small advance on his story, and what better way to use it than to make Curt’s life easier?

“When did you get home?” Curt asked, smiling in a manner that suggested relief.

“Just now.” Arthur took the book from him and turned the page before setting it back in Curt’s good hand. “Why is there a little girl in the other room?”

“Oh, her folks won’t let her have any games, so I let her use mine.” Curt shrugged. “There’s about five or six brats in this building whose parents are dipshits like that. Doesn’t bother me except when they all come up together. Then they get too fucking noisy.”

“Still seems noisy to me,” Arthur commented, shaking his head. With both doors open, the sounds coming from the television were quite obtrusive in the bedroom. “Isn’t it hard to read with that racket goin’ on?”

“Nah, doesn’t bother me.”

“Hmm.” Arthur didn’t entirely believe that. “Well, I’ll leave you to your book.”

“You don’t have to…”

“I’d like a chance to unwind,” Arthur said. “It’s been a stressful day. I’ll probably go watch a movie on the telly.”

“Okay. Maybe I’ll join you when I finish the chapter.”

Arthur nodded, and gave him a brief kiss—just because he could—before leaving the room again. As he passed by the door to the game room, he paused, then knocked on the door to alert the girl before he stepped inside.

She glanced over at him briefly, before returning her attention to her game. “You must be Curt’s boyfriend, huh?” she asked.

“That’s probably the easiest way to put it,” Arthur said. Not an accurate way, but an easy one. “Does your mum know you’re here?”

“You talk funny,” the girl said, laughing. “My mom’s not home.”

“She leaves you alone?”

“Yeah. This building’s really secure. No bad guys can get in.”

That would do nothing to keep the child from burning the flat down, or doing herself an injury in countless ways. But perhaps Arthur didn’t have any right to judge how others raised their children. “And she won’t be cross that you’re here playing video games?”

“Cross?” she repeated.

“Angry,” Arthur translated. Why didn’t Americans just use proper English? It would make his life so much easier…

“Oh, well, probably.” The girl shrugged. “But she’s a jerk, so I don’t care what she thinks. Besides, my dad lets me have all kinds of games.”

“I see.” Her parents were divorced, then. Probably better not to pry further. “What’s that beside you?” It looked like the day’s post…

The girl looked at him in confusion, then glanced at the pile of envelopes beside her before returning her attention to her game. “Oh, I was down in the lobby getting the mail when I saw Curt’s band leaving. And I thought maybe that meant it would be okay to come up and play a while. He gets real sore if you interrupt when he’s practicing, you know.”

“I’m sure he does,” Arthur agreed, trying not to laugh. There were a number of infamous stories—many of them doubtless apocryphal—about what Curt tended to do when someone interrupted him in rehearsals.

“But he seemed real happy to see me,” the girl went on. “Maybe he’s lonely when you’re not home.”

Arthur forced a laugh, and pretended to agree with her, then bade her good luck with her game, and headed on to the television room. Lonely…was not likely to be the right word. And Arthur didn’t think that he personally figured into the equation any more than anyone else. Himself, the Rats, Mandy, Phil, this girl…they were all serving the same purpose in Curt’s life right now, unless Arthur was missing his guess…

***

Curt flipped through the latest draft of Brian’s song one more time. It just wasn’t ready to perform yet. The next draft would be completely different, so what was the point of trying it right now?

“We doing that one or what?” Kevin asked.

“Nah,” Curt said, setting the sheet music aside. “Let’s just go over one of our old numbers.” He picked up the list of songs other people wanted to perform with him for the new benefit. Most of the bands wanted Curt to join them for one of their own songs, or were working on a new one for him to join them in. And a lot of the solo artists were writing new ones, too. This whole fucking disaster seemed to be motivating everyone. Everyone except…

“Hey, Curt, are we practicing or not?” Johnny demanded. “’Cause I have better things to do all day than stand here and stare at your ugly mug.”

Curt flipped him off without even looking. “There’s not much here we can practice,” he said, after another thirty seconds or so of contemplating the list. “Just a couple of ‘em want to do one of my songs.”

“ _Our_ songs,” Steve countered.

“Don’t remember _you_ writing any of ‘em!” Curt shook his head. “We’ve got a few choices.” There were more than just a few suggestions on the list, since every one of those solo artists had suggested three or four songs, but a lot of them Curt knew he wasn’t going to be up to singing right now. Not a prayer of it. Carefully, he picked the few songs that seemed most doable.

The Rats looked at each other, and started a brief discussion of the merits of each song. Secretly, Curt was rooting for the option with the longest intro so he could put off doing something for as long as possible. Unfortunately, they decided on the one with the shortest intro. Of course they did.

Kevin counted out the beat, and they all launched into the intro enthusiastically. How could they get so into it so soon after…

Curt almost missed his cue—did miss it by a bit, actually—and the first verse came out sloppy and rushed. Partway into the chorus, his voice turned into a croak and caught in his throat. Kevin was the first to stop, but the others also stopped quickly.

“ _Now_ what?” Steve looked every bit as pissed off as he sounded.

“I just got something in my throat. I need a drink.”

“You must be on different pain medicine than I am, if you’re allowed alcohol,” Kevin commented as Curt headed for the door.

“A drink of _water_ ,” Curt clarified, flipping them off behind his back as he left. The fuck was their problem? They were all acting like…like everything normal, when it wasn’t normal at all. Maybe it was never going to be normal again…

Curt could hear the Rats muttering to each other the whole time he was in the kitchen. He tried to tell himself that they weren’t in there talking shit about him. That they weren’t saying how the band should break up again, for good this time. That they couldn’t be saying that: all the other times they’d left him, it had been because he was so fucked up with drugs that he hadn’t been able to function, and they’d always come back once he sobered up again. They couldn’t want to leave him because…he wasn’t as badly broken as he had been when he was drugged out of his mind. He _couldn’t_ be…

Once was back in the sound booth, they started up again. He was closer to being on time now, and he got all the way to the second verse before he fumbled the lyrics, bringing the song to a crashing halt. On the third try, the chorus to an entirely different song came pelting out Curt’s lips, too fast, off-key, more wailed than sung.

“That is just fucking _it_!” Kevin threw down his drumsticks. “We’re just wasting our time.”

“Get your head back in the game before you call us up to waste more of our time,” Johnny added.

They were all leaving the sound booth before Curt could recover. He followed them down the hall towards the front door. “C’mon, guys, calm down! It was just a couple little mistakes—I’ll get it right next time! You don’t have to go!” They weren’t listening to reason. “Get back here! Motherfuckers!” The front door slammed shut. “Don’t—don’t leave me alone…”

It was just the corner of his ear, but Curt was sure he could hear a scream.

His hands trembled as he reached for the telephone. Maybe Mandy would have some time to spare…


	10. Chapter 10

It felt like it had been days—maybe weeks—since Arthur left Curt’s flat. The morning hadn’t been too bad, honestly. The others off the “associates” list who had been willing to talk to him had all been as cooperative as the ones yesterday had been. Unfortunately, “associates” had been someone’s euphemism for “victims,” and their testimony was quite repetitive. It built a very strong case that the man was a vicious brute who tended to use violence whenever things didn’t go his way, but it didn’t serve very strongly to illuminate any other mysteries, including the main one of why he had opened fire on the concert’s audience.

Having finished with those unfortunate women, Arthur had moved on to interviewing Rick Johnson’s former employers. Surprisingly (or not), they had not proven cooperative at all. One of them had outright denied having ever hired the man, even after his employees confirmed that he had. Most claimed that privacy laws forbade them from explaining why they had fired him, or even talking about him at all. Arthur knew that was utter rot, but was there any point in trying to assert that fact? At least a few of Johnson’s former co-workers had given him a _little_ useful information. Though it did rather boil down to the same basic data that had been provided by the victims. At least both victims and former co-workers had confirmed that Johnson had never shown any religious inclination whatsoever, nor had he ever seemed to particularly hate gays, so the right-wing claims that he had been acting out of religious zeal to prevent a cure for AIDS would be well disproved by the article, even if Arthur couldn’t find any more information.

As Arthur rode the lift up to Curt’s flat, he became aware of a pounding noise, and for a moment worried that something was wrong with the lift. It soon turned into an audible thumping that very clearly came from speakers turned up far too loud. The noise of it was almost deafening by the time he got off the lift, and he could practically feel the sound waves hitting his face as he opened the door into the flat.

Making his way into the television room, Arthur was nearly deafened by the stereo, and was so focused on it that he didn’t even see Curt in the room until after he had lifted the needle off the record, thankfully turning the cacophony into only the loud hiss of speakers turned up too high with no music coming out of them. Curt was already shouting at him to turn it back on as Arthur turned the volume down and turned off the stereo entirely. Only then did he turn and look at Curt, who was sitting slumped on the floor with a bottle of whiskey in his good hand.

“Curt, what are you—do you ‘ave any idea how _loud_ that was? I could hear it three storeys down in the lift! I’m amazed the paint wasn’t flakin’ off the walls!” Arthur snatched the bottle out of Curt’s hand and was about to lay into him for drinking despite the doctor’s orders when he noticed the tears in Curt’s eyes, and the dried tear trails all down his cheeks. Resignedly, Arthur took a swig of the whiskey himself, then set the bottle down where Curt couldn’t reach it. “What’s wrong, love?” Arthur asked, sitting down beside him.

“Turn it back on,” Curt insisted. “It was almost loud enough to drown them out.”

“Drown what out?” Arthur asked, though he had a feeling he knew the answer.

“The screams. Can’t you hear them?”

Arthur shook his head. “It’s all up here, Curt,” he said, putting a hand on the side of Curt’s head. “The screaming stopped a long time ago.”

“No, no, I can still hear it…”

Arthur sighed, and slid his arm around Curt’s shoulders. They felt smaller, somehow. “I know you can, but it’s only inside your head. You ‘ave to try and move on past it. That’s the only way to make it stop.”

“You really don’t hear it?”

“Not anymore.” Not entirely true. He could still hear the screams and the shots whenever he dwelt too long on thoughts of that day, but they weren’t coming unbidden anymore. Not so much as they had been, at any rate.

“How did you make it stop? I can’t—I can’t make them stop—I can’t hear anything else—I can’t focus on anything…” A shudder passed through Curt’s body.

“I started doing something about it,” Arthur said, pulling him closer. “As soon as I set out to expose what that monster was really after—tell the world why they really died—it started to fade out.”

“No…but….”

Arthur turned Curt’s face to look straight into his own. The bloodshot eyes were painful to see, but Arthur forced himself to look past them. “You’re workin’ on a benefit for their sake. That’s what you can do—what only you can do. They’ll be satisfied with that. I know they will.”

“But—”

“Just keep tellin’ yourself they’ll be satisfied, that you’re doin’ everything you can for them. It _will_ get better. I promise.”

Curt’s good arm wrapped around Arthur so tightly that it was almost painful. “But I can’t…” He lowered his head until his cheek was leaning against the outside of Arthur’s shoulder. “How can I put on a benefit when I can’t even sing…?”

No wonder the Rats always seemed so listless and annoyed… “You’ll be able to sing again, Curt. You just need to relax. Let your mind remember how it used to be.”

The way Curt’s body was shaking, Arthur suspected he was probably crying. “I don’t think I can.”

“You can. You just need to relax,” Arthur repeated. He could think of several good ways to get Curt relaxed enough to get the job done, but none of them felt very appropriate right now. If Curt hadn’t just been drinking, he’d have just given him a valium to calm him down, but if he’d downed that entire half bottle of whiskey, then a valium was out of the question. Maybe it would be better to let him drink until he passed out, then help him from there…? No, no, not a good idea. Never a good idea. “Right now, we need to get your mind off it, onto something else. What do you think will do a good job to distract you?”

“Gimme the whiskey back.”

“No. I’m not lettin’ you hurt yourself further.” Arthur stroked his back gently. “I’m supposed to be here lookin’ after your health, you know. Wouldn’t be doin’ a very good job of it if I let you drink yourself into a coma.” Hadn’t been doing a very good job of it to let Curt alone long enough to get into this state, either, but…well, he would tackle the question of what do about Curt during tomorrow’s interviews tomorrow. Tonight, he had to get Curt back into a healthier state of mind. “I don’t think you’re in any state to go out, or I’d suggest we go see a movie. Something new to occupy your mind.”

Curt pushed away from Arthur’s shoulder weakly. “If I could, I’d say we could fuck, but…” He let out a deep sigh.

“The mood’s not really right for it,” Arthur assured him. Best not to broach the subject of Arthur’s utter failure to obtain Curt’s sexual interest over the last few days. Curt might misinterpret and think Arthur was accusing him of something. “Do you want me to put a movie on the telly? Something you don’t know too well?”

Curt shook his head. “I know ‘em all pretty well.” He bit his lip. “Maybe just see what’s on,” he said. “It’s still afternoon, there’s probably cartoons on somewhere.”

Arthur didn’t know that cartoons were necessarily a good idea—cartoons could get violent in ways that were liable to be very upsetting to Curt’s current frame of mind, with guns going off in people’s faces (and somehow only charring them)—but he didn’t argue. He’d just have to keep an eye on what was going on and change the channel if any hunters showed up.

It turned out that while the old theatrical cartoons often used violence as comedy, modern television cartoons weren’t allowed to use it at all. They had to change channels several times to keep going with children’s television as the hour approached six, but at least it remained non-violent. Alarmingly stupid—was this really what Americans wanted their children, those fragile and developing minds, to watch?—but it was safely distracting and seemed to be doing a lot to help Curt’s mental state.

They ended up turning off the television on a high note, just as the cartoons were ending for the afternoon. A commercial came on for a programme called _Rainbow Brite_ , which looked particularly nauseating in its warm-and-fuzziness; the titular character had a number of friends representing the colours of the rainbow, a talking horse, and a little white puffball companion called Twink. They both got such a good laugh out of that unfortunate naming decision that it seemed the perfect time to switch off the telly. They spent a long time just sitting there laughing at what all those conservative young parents would think if they knew that their absurdly wholesome little girl’s television programme featured a character whose name suggested that he was a shallow, habitually passive homosexual. They also wondered if that meant someone making the programme was secretly gay, and they had included the name as a rebellion against the homophobic world they all lived in. Given the central nature of rainbows to the production, it didn’t seem impossible.

“Man, though, that’s a rep no one wants,” Curt said, after they had almost exhausted laughing at the programme.

“Believe me, I know that all too well,” Arthur agreed. “I was in danger of that back in London.” Probably an understatement: there were undoubtedly a lot of people who had only met him at parties and concerts that had come to that exact conclusion about him.

“Yeah, I can imagine that,” Curt laughed. “You were pretty enough. But no one would have _really_ thought of you that way. You were so quiet—it made you seem deep.”

“I was quiet because I was in awe of bein’ around you. You ask the Creatures sometime; I could be quite chatty.” Arthur shook his head. “And I’m rubbish at being chatty. Makes me sound a fool.” He wished he could have put that in the past tense, but…

“I don’t buy that at all.” Curt leaned back against the sofa. “You’re too smart to sound stupid. Too smart and too well educated. Not like me. You know, I’ve had people write it into contracts that I’m not allowed to talk to the press without a script to follow?”

“Shite…did you actually obey that?”

“Not usually,” Curt said, laughing. “Came close once, though. But only because Brian would coach me beforehand, tell me what he wanted me to say. I didn’t follow the script because Jerry made it a contractual obligation. I followed it because Brian wanted it.”

Arthur bit his lip. Talking about Brian was not the right thing for Curt right now, surely. “Of course, I’d expect most of the scripts you were given by other managers were trying to make you sound _more_ uneducated, not less.”

Curt nodded, laughing hard. “Fuck, that’s the truth! You know my first manager was actually the one who came up with that ‘raised by wolves’ shit?” He shook his head. “I mean, I kind of did, but I’d meant it metaphorically when I said I’d grown up in a den of wolves. Then he comes along and starts spouting all this stuff to the little radio stations who were actually playing my music about how I’d been born in a cave to a pack of wolves, and…I dunno, it was a fun lie.” He chuckled. “I used to tell the story at parties, and it’d get more elaborate every time I told it.”

“Yeah?”

“It got sick sometimes. Like the alpha of the pack making me his bitch and stuff.” Curt shook his head. “That was when I was really high that I’d say that shit. But it got me a reputation of preferring to be the bitch.”

“I can’t imagine anyone thinking that.” Arthur had trouble imagining Curt _ever_ being the passive partner with anyone, even Brian. (Though back in the day, he had of course imagined almost every possible sexual combination of Curt and Brian…)

“It was back when I was just starting to perform for money,” Curt explained. “That first manager, he took us to all these really rinky-dink concerts across the country, tiny festivals and shit. It blew, but it did get our name out there, attracted the attention of some record labels.” He laughed. “You know, I turned down the first record label that offered me a contract.”

“Why would you do that? What label was it?”

“Play-Tone. And I turned ‘em down ‘cause I was holding a grudge.” Curt grinned.

“I’m not sure I know that label.” That made Arthur feel positively uneducated, to be unaware of a label big enough to attempt to sign Curt Wild…

“They’re not really doing much anymore, and they were always kind of small potatoes anyway. Mostly signed newcomers and people whose careers were dead as shit.” Curt chuckled. “They had this whole multi-band tour group that just went to state fairs and other shit like that where there was already an audience gathered. I went to one of their concerts at the Michigan State Fair not long after the shock treatments were done, tried to get myself a job with them so I could get the fuck out of there. I was already pretty decent with a guitar, so I thought maybe I could be someone’s back-up, but I was willing to do absolutely anything, even just carrying shit to and from the tour buses. I even gave the motherfucker in charge of one of the bands a blowjob to try and grease the wheels.” Curt sighed. “He was glad to let me suck him off, but refused to take me along. Said I was too young. I guess I really was—I was only 15—but it pissed me off and I stayed pissed off.”

“Can’t blame you,” Arthur agreed. “He shouldn’t ‘ave accepted a sexual favour if he wasn’t going to help you.”

“Exactly! Especially since he had a serious boyfriend back in LA.” Curt shook his head. “I guess I kinda forgave him eventually. Brian and I went to some parties when we passed through California on tour, and he was at one of ‘em, and I didn’t punch him in the face like I’d always said I would, so…”

“I’m glad to hear it. You might ‘ave ended up in jail.”

“Yeah, they wouldn’t want cops at those kinds of parties,” Curt assured him. “They were pants-optional parties, if you know what I mean.”

“Sounds like the kind of parties Gary took me to when we first met.”

“Exactly,” Curt agreed, grinning. “It’s always like that. You get to a new town, meet a couple of guys, and they take you to all the hot parties, and next thing you know you’re sucking off your mom’s favourite ‘50s heartthrob actor.”

“You lost me with that last part.” Just what kind of parties had Curt been going to?!

“Nah, it’s pretty common. Most of ‘em were really gay, you know,” Curt insisted. “Seriously, who was your mom’s favourite?”

“I ‘ave no idea. Not sure she had one. I don’t think she’d ever fancy the heartthrob type.” The idea of his mum’s heart throbbing for anyone—even his dad—was a bit nauseating to Arthur…

“I bet she did,” Curt said, “and I bet he was really gay. There’s two kinds of heartthrobs, right? The ones who attract the teenage girls, and the ones that attract the lonely housewives. And that second type are usually gay. Something about the kind of warmth they project or something. I dunno.” He laughed. “Maybe by the time they get to be lonely housewives, they’re sick of having to put out for men who don’t give a shit about them, so the one thing that most turns ‘em on is a guy who prefers cock.”

While there was a certain amount of logic to that, it seemed horribly cynical. Surely there had to be _some_ happy marriages out there? “Did you end up doing that with a lot of ‘50s actors?” Arthur asked, wanting to change the subject slightly.

“Nah. Most of ‘em were too old for my tastes.” Curt shrugged. “Not that I mind an older man, in the right circumstances. But mostly I like ‘em younger,” he added, giving Arthur a wink.

“As a younger man, I’m glad to hear that.”

Curt grinned at him, and pulled him in for a deep kiss. It was one of the most passionate kisses Curt had given him all month, but the alcohol on his breath was almost enough to overwhelm Arthur. He must have had _more_ than just half that bottle of whiskey. No wonder it had been so easy for him to get so panicked, and to recover so quickly. ‘Mercurial’ was a word often applied to Curt, and he was proving now that it applied in a more literal sense than it was usually used…

“Man, I’m starved,” Curt commented, as he released Arthur’s lips. “Are you as hungry as I am?”

“I do feel a bit peckish,” Arthur agreed. “Do you want me to make dinner?”

“Nah, just call out for pizza. I feel like I could eat a whole one right now.”

“Won’t that take longer?”

Curt shrugged. “That’ll just mean I’ll be even hungrier when it gets here,” he replied, as if that was a good thing. It seemed to Arthur that that was quite what one wanted to avoid, but…in Curt’s still-inebriated state, arguing with him was probably not a good idea, especially over something as insignificant as what to have for dinner.

So Arthur duly ordered a pizza, and while they waited, Curt demanded that Arthur tell him all about the parties Gary had taken him to, with all the details of every single man Arthur had gotten off with at said parties. Despite that it had been five years ago, and Arthur hadn’t even caught most of their names in the first place. In a few cases, he wasn’t sure he’d even seen their _faces_ , let alone had a chance to ask their names.

With the dinner came a certain lessening of Curt’s drunken state, with all the risk of relapse that suggested. Arthur decided to take matters into his own hands, in the hopes of being able to nudge Curt over the edge that would allow him to begin his emotional recovery. Therefore, he brought him over to the sofa and asked what music he usually liked to put on if he was going to have sex. Curt’s face immediately wrinkled over with a pensive frown.

“There’s no point,” he said. “I don’t think I can—”

“Just tell me what record to put on,” Arthur insisted.

Curt just looked at him for a moment, as if judging how serious he was. Then he shrugged, and got back to his feet. “I’ll do it.” Arthur watched helplessly as Curt sorted through his massive record collection, selected one, and then struggled to get the vinyl out of the sleeve one-handed and onto the record player. Only after he had started the music going—an instrumental piece Arthur didn’t recognise—did Curt return to the sofa and sit down. “I don’t think it’s gonna help,” he said, with a morose sigh.

“Don’t worry about that,” Arthur said, moving over to stand right in front of him. “Just close your eyes and relax.” As Curt obeyed the command, Arthur knelt down, and reached for the zip on his trousers. “Try to think back to the best sex you’ve ever had—remember what it felt like, how sweet the atmosphere was…” As he spoke, he lowered the zip and gently extracted Curt’s cock, slowly stroking it as he did so.

“What would you think of?” Curt asked.

Arthur looked up at him—in a way that felt almost guilty—and saw that Curt’s eyes were open again, and trained right on him. “Me?” he repeated, his hands nervously releasing what they had been caressing only a moment before.

“Yeah. If it was you, what would you be thinking about?”

“But this isn’t about me—this is about _you_. You need to think of whatever—whoever—was best for you.” Arthur couldn’t bring himself to say what he knew had to be the case: Curt needed to remember some particularly fantastic night with Brian…

“That’s too vague. I want an example. If you were the one getting this treatment, what would _you_ be thinking about?”

“Well…that night on the roof in 1975, of course.” What other experience could ever compete with a mystical union with Curt Wild under the stars?

Curt smiled, his eyes sliding shut again. “Yeah…that _was_ pretty good…” Uncomfortably, Arthur resumed massaging Curt’s cock. It wasn’t having any effect so far; it remained entirely limp in his hands. “You were so beautiful…”

“I-I wasn’t…I wasn’t anything special…” How was he supposed to help Curt get over his sexual hang-up if he was being embarrassed to death?!

“You were the prettiest boy I ever saw,” Curt insisted.

Well, Curt’s cock was still completely limp, but Arthur’s was now hard as a rock. That was not how it was supposed to be happening. Not at all.

“That’s not…um…just…uh…try to remember…something that really turned you on…” Arthur had had this entire thing planned out perfectly, only Curt had completely ruined it by making him so nervous he’d forgotten the whole thing! Now it was going to fail, and everything was going to get even worse, and it would all be Arthur’s fault for being so easily flustered…

Curt laughed quietly. “That look on your face as you came out on the roof,” he said, his voice low, barely above a rough, sexual growl. “I couldn’t tell if you were scared or giddy or about to come in your pants…god, that was so fucking hot…that sure as fuck made _my_ pants get tight…”

Either it was the truth, or he was actually thinking of something else, because his cock finally started to stiffen. Arthur stepped up his ministrations, and soon it was erect enough that he was able to lean forward and take it into his mouth. Curt let out a moan, and his good hand shifted onto Arthur’s shoulder.

While it would have been a lie if Arthur had claimed to have spent the entirety of the last nine years fantasizing about being in this situation, it would also have been a lie to claim that he had never fantasized about it at all. The fantasy had been more common in the first year after their night together, but it had recurred often enough that Arthur had long since grown antsy whenever anyone brought up the very idea of Curt. Finally getting to act on it did not disappoint his years of fond longing. Curt wasn’t one of those sorts who was silent as death while he was getting a blowjob, nor was he the type to bark out instructions as if he was a drill sergeant. He let out beautiful deep groans of pleasure, and after a little while his hand migrated up to the back of Arthur’s head, his fingers tangling in Arthur’s hair, and his strong, firm grip navigating for Arthur, letting him focus entirely on the actions of his lips and tongue, and on applying just the right level of suction.

Arthur couldn’t say how it was on Curt’s end, but for him it felt just about perfect, a very rare thing indeed in giving head.

Arthur had barely finished swallowing when he heard a quiet, satisfied sigh as Curt’s hand dropped away onto his lap. By the time Arthur looked up at him, Curt was already asleep. Hopefully he wouldn’t normally fall asleep so quickly after an orgasm (he certainly hadn’t nine years ago!); he was, after all, still rather inebriated.

But Arthur was left with an erection so engorged that it was actually a bit painful, so he had to do _something_ about it, and since Curt was asleep, he really only had two options: do something about it himself, or go take a cold shower. And he didn’t think he was actually capable of walking all the way to the shower in this state. But there was a box of tissues nearby, and Curt was certainly not likely to wake any time soon, so Arthur grabbed a handful of tissues to clean up with, then carefully— _very_ carefully—lowered the zip on his own trousers.

All things considered, it took him longer to finish wanking that he would have expected—after all, he’d just had Curt Wild’s cock in his mouth, so it should have been over almost instantly!—but at least he was able to finish up quietly and not wake Curt.

Once everything was cleaned up and the tissues were deposited in the nearby rubbish bin, Arthur had little choice but to go about various mundane tasks that wanted doing. He put away the leftover pizza in the refrigerator, disposed of the delivery box, and put the dishes in the washer. It was probably that last that woke Curt.

“Huh…? Arthur…?”

“I’m in the kitchen—I’ll be right there.” If Curt had developed an insecurity about being alone, better not to risk it. He seemed all right when he knew there was someone in the next room, but why take chances?

Curt watched Arthur approach with concern and confusion. “You…sorry…it didn’t turn you on at all, huh?”

“What? No, of course it did!”

“But you’re not…I mean…” Curt gestured at Arthur’s trousers.

“I already dealt with that,” Arthur sighed.

Curt still looked confused, and looked around as if seeking an explanation. He seemed to find it in the bin. “Sorry,” he muttered, looking back up at Arthur. “That was—I should’ve—next time, wake me, and I’ll do it.”

“It’s all right, love,” Arthur assured him, sitting down close beside him. “This was about you, not me.”

“No, that’s no good,” Curt shook his head. “I don’t wanna be that kind of guy again.”

Arthur smiled, and took Curt’s good hand in his. “All right. If the situation arises again, I’ll be sure to wake you.” The chances of that happening seemed astronomically small, after all.

Curt smiled with relief at the promise, and pulled Arthur in for a kiss.


	11. Chapter 11

As pleasant as the previous night’s activities had ended up being, they also posed countless problems for Arthur going forward. If there was any chance that Curt would end up in another state of despondence like that on being left alone, then Arthur had to make sure he was absolutely _not_ left alone. But if he was still having trouble concentrating on singing, then calling the Rats over wasn’t going to help. Arthur would either have to find someone else to keep Curt company, or bring him along to today’s interviews. The latter seemed a terrible idea, but he wasn’t sure who to turn to for the former…

None of the few obvious choices seemed like a good idea. Mandy Slade had seemed annoyed the last time she had been called in just to keep Curt company; in fact, her comment about “babysitting” him had played a large role in Arthur figuring out what was going on. _Brian_ Slade, if Tommy’s attitude towards Arthur was any indication, would probably drop everything to come spend the day keeping Curt company, but Arthur was just selfish enough that he hated the idea of ruining what little chance he had with Curt by sending him directly back into the arms of the man he had loved so passionately and still hadn’t gotten over. (Realistically, he knew that was exactly what he _should_ do. The fact that Curt was still in love with Brian despite his having become Tommy meant that Arthur had no right to stand between them, and yet he wasn’t at all convinced that Curt would be any better treated by Tommy Stone than he had been by Brian Slade.) As Curt’s manager, Phil was probably the person that Arthur really _ought_ to call first, but if he learned there was anything fragile about Curt’s mental state, it might have any number of negative effects on Curt’s career, and possibly on Curt himself.

Surely Curt had more friends than just Mandy and his back-up band. If only he had taken Arthur seriously enough to introduce him to any of them!

Arthur was preparing breakfast in the hopes that working his hands would make his brain work better, but it didn’t seem to be having much effect, and by the time Curt came in, he still hadn’t formulated a plan for the day.

“You don’t have to go out and interview anyone else, right?” Curt asked as he sat down. There was a vulnerability in his voice that was a dagger in Arthur’s heart.

“I…” Arthur sighed, and started serving up the breakfast. “I was just tryin’ to think what to do about that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Curt gave him a suspicious look that Arthur couldn’t meet for long before turning his face away, ostensibly just to serve his own food.

“I just thought…I don’t…after last night, I…I don’t want to be away from you,” Arthur said, hoping that way of putting it would make it sound like his own clinginess, rather than him understanding the suffering that Curt had spent so long pretending he wasn’t experiencing. “But I do ‘ave to conduct more interviews…”

“Why not have them come here?” Curt suggested.

“Mmm, no, it’s not that kind of—they wouldn’t come. I’ll be lucky if they speak to me at all. They certainly won’t go out of their way.”

Curt shrugged. “Not much you can do then, is there? I’m not gonna follow you all over town while you talk to god-knows-who.”

In a way, it might actually be better if Curt would have agreed to come with him: Arthur’s face was known to some people because of the _Sentinel_ , but anyone who hadn’t seen that article had no idea just which side he was on, but with Curt there no one would be able to doubt… “Did you ‘ave plans for the day?” Arthur asked. “Plans you wanted me to be part of?”

“Nah,” Curt slurred through a mouthful of eggs. “Only…maybe I’m wrong. What day is it?”

“Wednesday,” Arthur told him, appalled that Curt could be so out of touch as to not know that.

“No, what day of the month, stupid.”

Arthur grimaced. “The fifteenth.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought it was.” Curt shook his head. “One of those latchkey brats downstairs has his birthday today. They’ll all be coming up here to play in the game room all day.”

Arthur tried not to let on how relieved he was to hear that. “Really? You allow that? And their parents don’t mind?”

“Their parents are out working. Sometimes they get sitters, but…” Curt shrugged. “Half the time, they just keep sending their kids to other apartments where there might be an adult to keep an eye on ‘em. It’s not a problem for them when school’s in session, but in the summer, the kids just run crazy all day. I usually don’t let them come up here in packs, but I have to make an exception for birthdays. I know how much it sucks when you don’t get to do something special for your birthday.”

Arthur smiled. “That’s very kind of you,” he said gently. He couldn’t help wondering if maybe Curt actually liked having so many children come up and experience the kind of happy, pleasant childhood that Curt never got himself. Why else would he own so many board games? “Did you need me to help keep them in line, then?”

“I dunno. Maybe that’d be worse,” Curt said, frowning. “I mean, they all know I’m gay, but…being told it and seeing for themselves is different. I could sure use your help getting ready, though.”

“Of course. What needs doing?”

Curt laughed. “First thing, we gotta get the adults-only games outta the game room and hide ‘em in the closet.”

“I hadn’t realised you _had_ any adults-only games.” Actually, Arthur hadn’t particularly been aware that such things even _existed_.

“Yeah, just a few. They’re good, though.” Curt grinned. “We should play ‘em sometime.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“After that, we’ll have to go get snacks and shit to feed the little brats,” Curt went on. “Normally, I’d be ready in advance, but I’ve been sorta distracted lately…”

“Of course. Do we need to bake a cake?”

“There’s a bakery nearby that always delivers one. It’s been a standing order for a few years now.”

“Just how old is this child?”

Curt paused, with a look of concentration. “I guess he’s about twelve or thirteen by now. The bakery’s got the exact number.” He shrugged. “It’ll arrive in the afternoon, freshly made. But we’ll have to pick up some ice cream to serve with it, and some other little stuff to give the kids the rest of the time.”

“What about lunch? Or do they arrive after that?”

“I usually just call out for pizza.” Not healthy, but Arthur could see the appeal of its simplicity.

After they finished with breakfast, they went to the game room and Curt pulled out three games from the shelf full of them. Two were decidedly hand-made, and the third was barely professional, marked as having been made by a particularly famous specialty shop in San Francisco. Curt had to stop and show off one of the hand-made games: it seemed to be a combination of _Monopoly_ and _Trivial Pursuit_ , but the board was decorated with images of various sexual positions (male only, of course), and all the playing pieces were hand-carved wooden phalluses. It had to have cost a lot, and Arthur wondered if Curt had commissioned it, or if some artist had actually been making sets of them, only somehow he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

They took the games back to the bedroom with them, and deposited them on a shelf in Curt’s walk-in closet before getting dressed. Arthur was by now getting quite used to helping Curt dress himself, and knew which steps Curt needed no help with, which he needed help with but didn’t want to admit to needing help with, and which he was openly helpless on. As always, the challenge was finding a way to help with that second sort without stepping on Curt’s ego. Amorousness came to the rescue on that score, as it usually did.

Their trip to the store for ice cream and snacks was quite a brief one, as Curt knew exactly what he wanted to pick up and where it was located, and they were soon headed back to the flat. To Arthur’s surprise, they weren’t alone in the hall when they stepped off the lift. A woman and a boy were standing at Curt’s door; though Arthur was no expert on judging the age of children, twelve or thirteen did seem about right, so he suspected it was the boy whose birthday they were preparing for. They turned around as Curt and Arthur approached them.

“Oh, you weren’t home,” the woman said, with a nervous laugh as she glanced over at Arthur. “We weren’t sure if maybe you forgot, or thought it was someone else at the door…”

“Forgot to pick up the ice cream early,” Curt told her. “Is it really that late?” He glanced at his left hand, then grimaced. “Right, can’t wear a watch right now…”

“I’m sorry—I have an earlier shift today than usual. In fact, I’m probably going to be late…”

“Go on, then. We’ll be fine. His friends’ll probably start coming up soon.”

“Um, but…ah…is your arm going to be okay?” the woman asked. “What about his lessons?”

“Oh, that.” Curt sighed. “Yeah, I dunno. It’s too soon to tell about my arm. The doctors said I might never be able to play again. But he’s far enough along, he doesn’t need me to demonstrate shit. He can just take verbal instructions.”

“Oh, thank you!” The woman gave Curt a light hug and a peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you tonight, Jimmy,” she added, waving at her son before hurrying into the lift.

The boy, who had been leaning back against the door to the flat the whole time, groaned as the lift doors closed behind his mother. “Great. More fucking guitar lessons. I hate the guitar!”

“If you say shit like that in front of your old lady, you better not be telling her you picked it up from me,” Curt said.

“I’m not stupid.”

“Um, Curt…what….?” Arthur said, not sure how to process any of what was going on.

“You’ve got the keys,” Curt reminded him. “Open the door before the ice cream melts. We can talk after it’s in the freezer.”

Chastened, Arthur obeyed hastily. The boy followed them lazily into the flat, slamming the door shut behind him. Only after Arthur had gotten all the groceries safely put away in their proper places did he ask Curt what was going on, exactly.

“Kid’s old man wanted him to go into classical Spanish guitar,” Curt explained. “His grandpa was a bigshot player in Seville or someplace. Only his old man got hit by a car when he was little, and his old lady doesn’t know shit about music. But she moved in here about six, seven years ago, and when she moved in, everyone was telling her how it might get noisy, ‘cause the man living in the penthouse liked to play his guitar at all hours of the night. So she comes right up here, introduces herself, tearfully explains about her dead husband’s wishes, and asks me to teach her son to play. Despite that I don’t know shit about Spanish guitar. Fuck, she didn’t even know who I was!” He shook his head.

“Why did you agree?”

Curt shrugged. “I guess I’m as weak to a crying woman as anyone else. Besides, my career was starting to cool off, and I was bored.”

“Are you actually teaching him Spanish guitar, or…?”

“Sort of. I read up on the technique and all at the time. It’s…the fundamentals aren’t _that_ different. A chord’s a chord, right? Besides, it’s not that different from how I originally learned. Either way, I’m not about to try giving lessons while I’m still in this cast. Just not happening.”

Arthur nodded, and looked around the kitchen and what he could see of the rest of the flat from there. “Where did the boy go?”

“Probably the game room. He’s always trying to beat my high score on my own pinball machine.” Curt grimaced. “That’s just wrong, you know? It’s not _his_ face they did a half-assed job of painting on the thing!”

Arthur laughed, and gently comforted Curt’s ego as they headed towards the game room. Inside, as Curt had predicted, they found the boy playing pinball. Arthur watched uncomfortably as Curt asked the boy about when his friends were going to show up—probably within the half-hour—and reassured him that no matter what, guitar lessons wouldn’t resume until the cast came off. Then the room fell into a silence broken only by the myriad sounds made by the pinball machine.

Finally, Curt looked over at Arthur. “I can handle things here,” he said. “If you’ve gotta go out and interview people, you’d better get on it.”

Arthur nodded. “All right, if you’re sure you’re all ready for the day.”

Curt assured him that he was, so Arthur headed into his bedroom—as he had come to think of the room with the rock posters, despite that he had never yet slept in it—to fetch his satchel and notebook. Before stepping out for the day, he consulted his list to get an idea of what his best itinerary was. He needed to visit as many of the rest of Johnson’s ex-employers as he could, and both his current and previous residence. Though the current residence would surely be the best source of information, he’d travel more efficiently if he went to it last.

Part of Arthur wanted to be lazy and dismiss all the other sources. The other ex-employers were sure to be just as adamant in their refusal to talk as the ones he’d spoken to yesterday. (And he wasn’t even bothering to ask questions at the police station that had temporarily hired Johnson in an unspecified capacity. He already knew _they_ wouldn’t talk to him.) And would he really learn anything different at the previous residence than he would at the current one?

No matter how many times he told himself that it would be all right to skip so many potential sources of information—especially since he wasn’t even on an assignment, as such—it just felt so unprofessional, so _wrong_ , that he couldn’t do it. Therefore, he duly headed out of the flat and to the nearest subway station, his first destination being the nearest of Johnson’s former employers.

***

Even looking back on the morning’s decision not to cut corners, Arthur still wasn’t sure whether it had been the right call or not. At least some of the other ex-employers had admitted to hiring—and quickly firing—Rick Johnson, and a few even admitted that they had rather _expected_ he would eventually appear on the news as the perpetrator of some foul act, though they had mostly expected him to turn out to be a serial rapist or a kidnapper. But in the end, it still boiled down to the same thing it had everywhere else: the man frightened everyone around him, because he was visibly deranged. Out of all the sources Arthur had contemplated skipping, the only really good piece of information—an ideal quote, in fact—had come from the wife of the elderly landlord of Johnson’s previous residence, who told him that she had asked her husband to “encourage” Johnson to leave, because she was a deeply religious woman and tried to keep their apartment building a “good Christian house” and she had always felt as though Johnson was secretly worshipping the Devil, and that even if he wasn’t, he was absolutely out of place in her moral world. (She had also spent about ten minutes trying to explain to Arthur why his lifestyle was a sinful one, but said that he seemed like such a nice boy that he was sure to end up in Purgatory rather than Hell.) The few residents of the building that Arthur had encountered other than the landlord and his wife either hadn’t been living there while Johnson was, hadn’t met him, or wouldn’t admit to having met him.

As he approached Johnson’s current residence, Arthur could only hope he would get some better information. What he had right now…well, it would shatter the claims of the religious right that Johnson was some kind of divine shock trooper sent by God to wipe the stain of homosexuality from the earth, but it wouldn’t have too much punch, unless he focused more heavily on how the police and the mainstream media were purposefully preventing the public from learning just how deranged Johnson actually was. And, honestly, there wasn’t much to be said there without some proof that they were being actively silenced, and proof like that was hard to obtain, especially without ending up in jail.

The building had wide steps leading up to a locked door with an intercom buzzer that had no indication of just who was on the other end of the buzzer. Still, there didn’t seem to be anything else to do, so Arthur pushed the button.

“Who do ya want?” a man’s voice crackled back at him after about a minute.

“Er, I was hopin’ to speak to the landlord,” Arthur said.

“We got no vacancies.”

“No, I—uh—I’m a journalist,” Arthur explained. “I wanted to ask some questions about one of your tenants.”

“What paper are you with?” The landlord’s voice was thick with suspicion.

“I’m a freelance journalist. This story is for _Weekly News_ , but I’m not—”

“Huh…that’s the leftist version of _Time_ , yeah?”

“Er…I suppose that’s how some people describe it,” Arthur answered, feeling rather lost at the question.

“All right, I’ll speak to you. Wait there.” It took almost five minutes for the landlord—dressed in grubby denim slacks and even grubbier sleeveless undershirt—to open the door and let Arthur into the hall of the building. He looked Arthur over very carefully from head to toe, twice. “Guess you don’t dress toney enough to be one of those motherfuckers,” he finally said, “but you better not be in disguise! I know guys who know guys, if you know what I mean. I see any word of mine appear in a story headlined ‘Free Saint Johnson,’ and I’ll have them end you!”

Arthur smiled, and tried to chuckle, though nothing really came out. “I’m tryin’ to expose the lie they’ve been building up. Believe me, I was almost one of his victims myself.”

“Yeah?”

Arthur nodded. “A woman standing not two feet in front of me was shot. She’s still…well, last I heard, they didn’t think she was going to wake up from her coma…” He was still hopeful, but…he didn’t know how long her family was going to want to pay to keep her alive in that state.

“So, what do you want to know?”

“Well…everything, really. What he’s like, how he behaves towards the other residents, complaints he’s made, complaints others ‘ave made about him…anything you can think of about him.” Arthur paused, biting his lip. “I suppose it’d be illegal to ask to see his flat,” he added quietly, more thinking aloud than anything else. He'd been much more worried—bordering on paranoid, really—about legality since finding out that Shannon Hazelbourne had a dossier on every questionable thing he had ever done...

“His flat?” the landlord repeated, laughing. “Makes it sound so classy!” He shook his head. “There’s still police tape cordoning it off. Not that there’s shit left in there anyway; they took every last thing but the furniture out.” The landlord shrugged. “Come on back to my apartment,” he said. “This is going to take a while. Better if we sit down, maybe have a drink. Suppose you can’t drink while you’re on duty, huh?”

“Journalism isn’t that formal,” Arthur replied, with a weak chuckle as he followed the landlord towards the open door to his flat, not twenty feet away. “So long as I don’t ‘ave enough to impair my mind, I can drink while I’m working.” In some cases, it was a necessity to make the interviewee feel more relaxed.

“Good. This shit is easier over a beer.” The landlord led the way through his flat into the underwhelming kitchen, complete with avocado-green appliances that had obviously seen very heavy use in their twenty years of life. The landlord grabbed two cans of cheap domestic beer out of the fridge and placed them down on the table, a plastic and metal contraption that looked to Arthur’s eyes to date to the 1950s. Only then did the landlord sit down, gesturing to Arthur to follow suit. Neither table nor chair was quite as stable as Arthur would have preferred—though not truly rickety, either—but he pretended not to notice, and opened his can of beer, setting it down again otherwise untouched. (He knew he’d drink from it occasionally over the course of the interview, but the less he drank of it the better. Both from a sobriety point of view, and in light of the fact that it was guaranteed to taste awful.)

They sat in silence until Arthur prompted the landlord to start his story.

“I gotta admit, I didn’t want that guy moving in here,” the landlord sighed. “But I got a policy. You got a job, you got the first and last month’s rent, you don’t got active warrants out for your arrest, you got yourself a apartment.” He scowled. “It’s a stupid policy, but life can be hard in this city—or anywhere else—for an ex-con. No one wants to hire you, no one wants to rent you a place to live: if you don’t got friends, you’re fucked.” He shook his head. “I’m glad to say I ain’t one myself, mind you, but I’ve known guys. Drugs, the mob, drunken brawls…lots of guys end up in prison, and they get out ready to fix themselves up into better men, and they find the system won’t let ‘em. End up homeless, some of ‘em, ‘cause they can’t get a job or a place to live. Well, I can’t afford to rent to someone who can’t pay their rent, but other than that, I don’t judge people. I’m not supposed to judge people. I don’t wanna judge ‘em. But then you get someone like Johnson, and you think that maybe there’s a _reason_ everyone else judges ‘em.”

“Is he an ex-con? None of my research—”

“No, not as such. Not yet.” The landlord laughed. “Though I’d rather see him go to the chair than to jail. Anyway, he’s been hauled into court a lot, but he’s always gotten off on technicalities. Lack of evidence, usually. That and the way it’s always the victim getting put on trial instead of the man who attacked her.”

Arthur nodded. Mary had written countless stories for the _Herald_ about the way rape and sexual assault victims were further victimised for seeking legal redress for the wrongs done to them. Most of the stories hadn’t even been printed. “I’m surprised that after a while the prosecuting attorneys didn’t point out his record as proof that he was guilty.”

The landlord grimaced. “They did, and his defense lawyer would turn that around and say how the fact that he was never convicted only proved that he was still innocent, that he was always being falsely accused. How he was just too passionate and sometimes it scared a few girls into thinking he’d attacked them when he hadn’t even touched them.”

“And that actually fooled the jury?”

“According to Rick, it did,” the landlord said, his face contorting with disgust. “Motherfucker came in here one day to pay his rent, still laughing about how his trial had gone down a couple days before. How his lawyer was so good at making it look like _he_ was the victim.”

“Did he admit in that conversation that he had been guilty of what he had been on trial for?”

The landlord nodded. “Fucker was _proud_ of getting away with rape.”

“That’s…that’s unspeakable…” And it would definitely make Arthur’s article stronger. He made a note to go to the records room of the city courts and look up every time Rick Johnson had been up before the courts…

“I wanted to kick him out then and there, but I talked to a lawyer friend, and he said that because of the way my policies were written up and the paperwork Rick signed when he moved in…if I kicked him out, he could sue me. All I could do was make sure to do a shit-poor job handling any complaints he made about the apartment and hope he’d move out on his own. Didn’t do any good, of course. I was thinking about actually releasing cockroaches into his apartment when he was out, but that would have been bad for everyone else, too.” He shook his head.

“Could ‘ave put out dead ones,” Arthur suggested.

The landlord laughed. “I’ll have to try that if I ever get another problem tenant!” He sighed. “Of course, I’ve rewritten my lease agreement now. New version says that if you’re brought to court on any crime more serious than a traffic violation, then I have the right to evict you at the end of the month. But I can’t force old tenants to sign the new agreement, per the old agreement. Shoulda had a lawyer draw up the first one for me instead of being such a cheapskate.” The landlord took a long gulp from his can of beer, and the room fell into silence.

“Changing the subject slightly,” Arthur said, clearing his throat before speaking, “did you ‘ave any idea that Johnson owned a weapon like the one he used in the attack?”

“No, never saw anything like that in his apartment.” He shook his head. “Friend of mine was at the concert, too; he was one of the civilians who took it on themselves to tackle that motherfucker and make him stop shooting before the cops could drag their sorry asses out to the park to stop him. This friend of mine, he fought in Korea and went to ‘Nam as an NCO. He said he’d never seen anyone handle that level of weaponry so awkwardly. And let me tell you, the people who keep guns in their homes all the time, they know how to use ‘em. Better than that, anyway. My friend said it looked like he’d only fired the thing once or twice before. Said it looked brand new, too. Practically still had the price tag on it.”

“So, would he say that Johnson had probably purchased that weapon specifically to use it for that attack?” Arthur asked.

“He would absolutely say that. You want his name? I’m sure he’d be glad to go on record saying it.”

“If he’d be amenable, that would be useful, thanks. A direct quote from a veteran who was at the scene would give the story that much more weight.”

Obligingly, the landlord gave Arthur his friend’s name and telephone number, which Arthur carefully wrote down. The interview kept going for nearly an hour; it was probably the most useful information he had gotten since he started researching this story. It was, however, much too late in the day for him to go door-to-door looking to interview the other residents of the building; he was worried that the children would have left Curt alone in the flat and that there might be a recurrence of yesterday’s events.

As Arthur was leaving the building, he found that there were three young women—roughly university-aged—sitting on the steps of the building, chatting. They were all quite attractive, and seemed to fit the general profile of the sort of women that Johnson had been victimising, so Arthur approached them to see if any of them could tell him anything. One of them—a redhead—noticed Arthur and said something he couldn’t quite hear to her two friends, making them all laugh gaily. The other two looked over at him, still laughing, and the brunette just kept on laughing. The blonde, on the other hand, stopped laughing, her face changing in the light of dawning recognition. Arthur was all too used to that in the time since the concert, but he was surprised to see her expression changing not to one of pity or disgust, but to one of guilt.

“I’m sorry,” she said, almost in a whisper, as he reached them. “I didn’t mean it—I didn’t know!”

Before Arthur could ask what she meant, the girl had gotten to her feet and run inside the building. “What…?”

The cheerful mood of the other two girls had vanished, and they looked at Arthur warily. “Who are you?” the brunette asked. “You been coming around here before?”

Arthur shook his head. “I’m Arthur Stuart, a freelance journalist. She probably saw my picture in the _Sentinel_ last week.”

“Are you…um…someone from that concert?” the redhead asked.

“Yes, I’m a survivor of the attack.”

The girls’ mood seemed to sink further. “It really wasn’t her fault,” the brunette said, her voice weak.

“What wasn’t?” Arthur asked, trying to be as gentle as possible.

The girls looked at each other uncomfortably. “Well, you know that the killer lives in this building, right?” the redhead started.

“Yes, that’s why I’m here. I was interviewing the landlord about him. Trying to find out the real reason he did it.”

That made them look even more uncomfortable, and suddenly avoid looking at his face. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? If we tell you, you’ll keep it a secret?” the redhead asked.

“I’m a journalist. I can’t keep the truth a secret. But I always keep my sources anonymous if they don’t want their identities revealed.”

“It’s not us, it’s our friend,” the brunette said, gesturing at the door. “E—the one who just went inside now. You won’t tell anyone who she is, will you?”

“I don’t even _know_ who she is,” Arthur reminded her. “Even if I did, I’d be glad to extend your anonymity to her as well.”

The girls exchanged glances again, then got to their feet, nodding. “Okay, we’ll tell you, but if you do anything to expose her identity…”

“I promise you, I won’t.”

“What happened was…well…that guy, that killer, he was always all over all of us,” the redhead started, “but he liked her the best. He was always giving her creepy little presents and asking her out. She always turned him down, and she usually tried to pretend like she just wasn’t allowed to go out on dates or party or anything.”

“Only the week before the concert, we’d been out clubbing until late, and we’re coming home drunk and all, and he comes out of his apartment and sees that we’re totally drunk, right?” the brunette continued for her. “He says he’s so glad to see we’re not tee-totaler squares anymore, and how now she’d be free to go on a date with him the next weekend. And she’s—I mean, she’s drunk, right? She wasn’t thinking clearly. She tells him she can’t go on a date with him then because she’s spending the whole time at that three day concert in Central Park, and he obviously can’t come because there’s a policy of no tiny dicks allowed.” She shook her head sadly. “We all went back into our apartment, laughing at him, only then he recovered from the shock and started pounding on the door half the night. He must have been out there until five in the morning. We were scared to call the police ‘cause we kind of might have had some marijuana in the apartment…but you won’t tell anyone that, will you?”

Arthur smiled reassuringly. “Given the sort of things I did when I was your age, I’d be a hypocrite if I did. How did you get him to go away?”

“One of the neighbours eventually called the police,” the redhead explained. “We didn’t think anything more about it until we heard what he’d done at the concert. She really didn’t know he’d do that. We’ve been trying to keep her from thinking about it. Every time she does, she just starts hating herself more and more.”

“It’s not her fault,” Arthur said. “Young women say that kind of thing every day without it leading to anything amiss. She had no way of knowing. But I’m grateful to you for telling me. The world needs to understand why he really did it. And don’t worry, I won’t say anything to let people deduce her identity.” He paused. “You might want to try getting her into some psychological therapy. To help her understand that it wasn’t her fault. And maybe find a new place to live. Staying here and seeing the same sights…it has to be making everything worse.”

The two girls nodded, thanked him, and hurried inside to tend to their friend.

After they were inside, Arthur headed to the nearest pay phone. He wanted to talk to the landlord’s friend as soon as possible…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how much I hate the fact that I both wrote "a apartment" and left it there. But it felt (perhaps wrongly?) like that was how this guy would talk.


	12. Chapter 12

When the last kid left after the party, Curt left the apartment, too, and went downstairs to hang out with the doorman. Not exactly his best buddy in the world, but he didn’t like the idea of being alone. Not after the way he’d flipped out yesterday.

It was probably for the best that Curt wasn’t alone. He might have been able to handle it if it had only been a few minutes, maybe half an hour, but Arthur didn’t get back until almost seven. He seemed surprised to see Curt sitting at the doorman’s station just inside the front door.

“Curt? What…?”

“Felt like hanging out down here,” Curt said, getting up. “But where the fuck have you been? Did you interview the entire fucking city?”

“I’m sorry. Things got out of hand,” Arthur admitted, “but I got the story. I know why he did it, and it had nothing to do with you, the benefit, or any of the things those mainstream hacks ‘ave been saying. I just need to talk to one, maybe two more people, and then I can start writin’ the story.”

Curt groaned. “You’re gonna go back out again tomorrow?”

“Depends how things go tonight.”

“You’re going back out _tonight_?”

Arthur smiled uncomfortably, and cast a glance at the doorman, who was watching them with a placid smile on his face. (Of course he was. As many joints as he had smoked while Curt was there, he’d take _anything_ with a smile on his face. Fuck, Curt was half high just having been there for it.) “It’s a long story. I’ll explain while we go upstairs.”

“Yeah, but…I was thinking maybe _we_ could go out tonight…” Curt complained, even as he went with Arthur to the elevator. After all, he’d _finally_ been able to get it up last night. Maybe tonight, with a little luck, they’d actually get to fuck…

“No reason we can’t do both,” Arthur assured him, with a smile. Once the doors to the elevator were closed, he went on: “I certainly wanted you to come with me tonight.”

“Why? Who are you talking to?”

“My police source.”

“Shouldn’t you have talked to someone like that _first_?”

Arthur shook his head. “He’s not stationed anywhere near Central Park, so he’ll probably ‘ave to break some rules to look up what I want to know. If he even can.” He shrugged. “Can’t even be sure he’ll be able to.”

“Uh…okay. Where are you meeting him?”

“Same place I first met him.”

“Where’s that?”

Arthur smiled. “The Fallen Fig Leaf.”

“Okay, _now_ you’re talking!” Curt put his arm around Arthur’s waist as they left the elevator. “So, is he an ex?”

“We may ‘ave had one or two quick ones in the loo, but nothing serious,” Arthur said, as he fished the keys out of his pocket. “He’d lose his job if anyone knew he was gay, so he can’t ‘ave serious relationships.”

Curt sighed. “Seems like that’s the case everywhere.”

“Pretty much.”

Curt watched in silence as Arthur unlocked the door to the apartment, and went inside. In fact, he stayed silent all the way to the bedroom, where Arthur ditched his bag and started looking around in Curt’s closet for something better to wear. “Hey, is this cop really gonna be out clubbing on a Wednesday night?” Curt asked.

“Normally, no, of course not.” Arthur chuckled. “I called and asked him to meet me there.”

“Does he know you want to talk shop? He doesn’t think it’s a date, does he?”

“I was quite clear that it was all business, yes,” Arthur assured him. “And he knows I’m living with you right now.”

Curt tried to laugh. “Everyone seems to know that,” he said. Somehow it hurt that Arthur had only said they were living together, not simply together. Not that Curt had any right to complain about it, not when he was the one who kept failing to perform… “So, do you always go to such classy places?” Curt asked, trying to change the subject. The Fallen Fig Leaf was the kind of gay bar that catered towards the art gallery, literary elite, and Broadway insider crowd. Curt had only been in a couple of times, right when it opened, just to see what it was like; mostly he stayed away because it seemed much too much like the kind of place Brian might have gone.

“I can’t afford to go anywhere very often,” Arthur said, as he shrugged out of his own dingy knit shirt and selected one of Curt’s nicer shirts out of the closet. “What attracts me about the Fallen Fig Leaf is that it opened after 1980, so it’s never been raided as a ‘den of vice.’ Always felt like I was risking less there than at older clubs.” He pulled the shirt on, and ran his fingers through his hair—dislodging the last hold of the morning’s overdose of gel in the process—before looking over at Curt. “Besides, it’s not as well known among straight people as some other places. So, uh, do I look all right?”

“I dunno…depends.”

“On what?” Confusion looked quite adorable on Arthur.

“If that cop or anyone else is looking to score with you. If that’s gonna be the case, you need to look a lot worse.”

Arthur stared at him blankly for a moment, then laughed before moving up close and kissing him. “It doesn’t matter how many of them try it,” he said quietly. “I don’t want anyone else.”

Yeah, that was a lie. That _had_ to be a lie. That wasn’t even believable as a conditional “right at this moment” kind of thing. No way he could be satisfied with someone who’d only managed to get it up once in the past two weeks, and then hadn’t even been able to _do_ anything with it once it was up. Curt couldn’t bear the idea of pointing that out, though. It was humiliating enough just _knowing_ there was something wrong with him, without talking about it, too. So he didn’t have much choice but to let it pass, pretend he accepted that bald-faced lie.

Curt was too busy swallowing down his objections to that lie to be able to say anything else, so they didn’t speak again until they were at the door, leaving the apartment. “Hey, do you drive?” Curt asked. No way Curt could with one useless arm. Not without a buttload of practice first.

“Don’t even know how,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “Between London and New York, never seemed to be a need to learn. No money to get a car, either.”

Curt frowned. “We’ll have to get a cab, then. I don’t think I want to try the subway right now.” He’d become a bit too recognizable again, and with one arm in a cast he couldn’t really defend himself very well from the homophobes and other violent shitheads.

Arthur bit his lip. “Might be for the best,” he agreed.

Curt’s neighborhood wasn’t really great for flagging down cabs—especially not while Curt was a hot property to any tabloid reporters that might be lurking around for a story—so they had to wait with the doorman, inhaling even more second-hand marijuana smoke, while a cab could be sent to get them. The driver looked more than a little uncomfortable at having two men get in the back seat together, but he laughed when Arthur gave him the club’s address. Evidently, he knew the place. So much for Arthur’s claim that straight people didn’t know what it was.

The drive wasn’t long, but the price was outrageous; either he was overcharging them for being gay, or he had figured out who Curt was. Well, if he was gonna charge twice what it said on the meter, he didn’t need a tip. That was how Curt saw it, but Arthur looked pained, and the driver called them some nasty things Curt hadn’t heard in years when he realized he wasn’t getting a tip. Curt flipped him off, and the motherfucker tried to run over his feet as he peeled away from the sidewalk.

Curt was still screaming obscenities at him as Arthur dragged him inside the front door of the building. The blast of frigid air-conditioning hitting him in the face calmed him down a little, but he was still seething as Arthur tried to murmur some shit or other in his ear. Like a little lovey-dovey talk was gonna matter after some fucker tried to maim him even further than he already was? Why did Arthur always have to be such a pussy when things got rough?

Some other guy came in after a few minutes, and stared at them as if they had antennae. Kept staring all the way up the stairs to the club, too. What was _his_ problem?

“I’m sorry, do you not want to be here?” Arthur asked, moving in between Curt and the door to the club, so he couldn’t keep glaring at the back of the man who had already gone inside. “I can go in alone and keep it short if—”

“You are not going in to meet with a fucking ex behind my back,” Curt snarled. “Not if you wanna keep living in my apartment.”

Arthur produced a little noise deep inside his throat, like he had started to answer back and forced it down again. From the look on his face, he might have been hurt, insulted or pissed off. He had one of those faces where you can see they’re feeling _something_ , you’re just not sure _what_. Brian was the same way…when he chose to let on that he _had_ feelings…

“What do you want to do, then?” Arthur asked, after standing there and feeling some mysterious something for a minute or two. “I can call the bar and ask them to tell him I can’t make it, if you’d rather we went somewhere else.”

Curt wanted to say that he’d rather be anywhere but there. That the cop could just sit alone all night without even knowing Arthur wasn’t coming for him. But if he said that…fuck, who’d know _when_ he’d get laid if he said that. The whole world thought they were an item, so no one was gonna want to get in the way of that, and Arthur had to already be teed off after he didn’t get anything last night. If Curt took away his story, that’d be his third strike, only how could he tell the press they’d already split when…no, that’d make him look like a whore, a slut like his sister. No fucking way did he want anyone thinking that. “We’ll go in,” he grumbled. Didn’t have any fucking choice, did he?

“I promise I’ll keep it quick,” Arthur said, giving him a brief kiss, barely more than a light pressure on his lips. Fuck, he didn’t even want to kiss anymore? Curt was in deeper shit than he had thought… “Then we can go someplace you’d prefer.”

Everyplace Curt could think of that he’d rather be wasn’t really a choice. Most of them were on the other side of an ocean, didn’t exist anymore, or both… “Let’s get it over with.”

Arthur led the way up the half flight of stairs to the club, but waited to open the door until Curt was standing right beside him. The doors were plain on the outside, except for the name of the club painted on the wood in gold letters. Inside the door was a coat check that doubled as the cover charge desk. The guy behind the desk waved them on, though, saying that they didn’t need to pay the cover. Fuck, Arthur came here so often that he got in free? So much for his claims not to go out much! How many other lies was he telling?

Another set of doors stood between them and the club proper. As always, opening them was a bizarre reversal for Curt. He was used to thinking of gay bars as places with a smoky atmosphere and dim, moody lighting, good for getting off in the corner without attracting too much attention. But there was no smoking inside the Fallen Fig Leaf—not even dope!—and it was as brightly lit as one of the museums its décor pretended to be. The statues were still everywhere; most of them were reproductions of ancient Greek and Roman marbles, all male nudes, of course, most of them with restored body parts, since the penis always seemed to be the first thing that got lost when a statue ended up in the dirt. The only ones Curt really liked were the Roman ones with the huge hard-ons. One of ‘em was about the size of Curt’s arm. That one was fucking awesome.

Normally, the only thing about the place that felt like an ordinary club was that there was pounding music and the murmur of all the patrons’ voices. Tonight, that wasn’t the case. There was no music, and the patrons—only a few dozen, not surprising for a Wednesday—were standing quietly, whispering to each other. At least, it was silent until a voice suddenly announced their arrival through the sound system: “Gentlemen, a big hand for the one and only Curt Wild!”

The patrons burst into a pleasing round of applause, and Curt quickly lost his grip on his bad mood as they came crowding over, wanting to shake his hand or express their hopes that he’d recover soon or tell him how much they were looking forward to his next album, all the usual shit. By the time they finally finished, Arthur had long since disappeared, and Curt was left standing just inside the door, alone.

Had Arthur just up and abandoned him? Was he going to have to make his way back to the apartment alone? Would he find that Arthur had removed all his shit and—

Curt didn’t even finish his thought before he spotted Arthur sitting at the bar, alone. Grimacing, Curt followed him over and sat down beside him. “You weren’t gonna wait for me?”

“I seemed to be in the way over there,” Arthur said. “I was takin’ up precious space in your orbit.”

Curt sighed, and shook his head. There might have been some truth to that. “Hey, how about some drinks down here?” he called, gesturing to the bartender.

“What would you like, Mr. Wild?” the bartender asked, a note in his voice that bordered on the obsequious. That was just fucking wrong in the bartender at a gay bar, no matter how upscale it was. (Curt was used to them saying things like “What are you having, honey?” and shit. “Mr. Wild” was way over the line all by itself.) “It’s all on the house for you.”

“I just want a beer. And I don’t mind paying for it.” They probably meant it as a compliment, Curt knew that, but it felt like pity for the invalid who couldn’t even get it up. But the bartender didn’t listen; he just went to the tap and poured Curt a beer, then went back to the other end of the bar without even seeing if Arthur wanted anything. “Hey, what the fuck?”

“It’s all right,” Arthur said, setting a hand on Curt’s arm. “I’m here to work; I shouldn’t be drinking right now.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know that!”

“Yes, he does; I told him I didn’t want anything when I sat down.”

“Oh.” Try as he might, Curt couldn’t quite find an excuse to be pissed about that. “So…now what?” By now, the music had long since come back on—much quieter than at a standard club, loud enough to dance to but not really enough to kill off conversation—and the other patrons had gone back to their business of dancing and flirting and sneaking off to fuck behind the statues.

Arthur shrugged. “Now we wait for my contact to get here. He’s got a lot of pressures on him, so sometimes he does run quite late. He made it sound like there wouldn’t be a problem today, but…” He sighed. “Evidently there was one.”

“Terrific.” Curt grimaced. Now what? Wait for some motherfucker with a working cock to come over and seduce Arthur?

“I’m sorry. I thought this would get everything done with faster. If I’d known, I’d ‘ave asked to meet him tomorrow.”

“Should’ve asked him to come by my place tomorrow to talk to him.”

“Yes, I should ‘ave,” Arthur agreed. “Wish I’d thought of it at the time.”

Curt couldn’t repress a chuckle. At least Arthur was willing to admit when he made a mistake. That put him light years ahead of Brian… “When he’s late, how late does he end up being?”

“That depends on _why_ he’s late. If he’s been called to duty over something—a major criminal act or a disaster currently in progress—he might be hours, maybe not even make it. If he’s just been delayed with paperwork or by traffic, he shouldn’t be too much later at all.”

Curt bit his lip. “Guess if we had a police scanner we’d be able to find out if it was something big, but…”

“Where would we get one of those?”

Curt shrugged. "Dunno.” He'd always thought—before gay sex was finally decriminalized—that gay bars ought to keep police scanners in the office in case they got raided, but he doubted any of them ever did. Besides, too many guys wouldn't go if they knew the cops were coming.

Arthur nodded. “Well, we could try the second best approach.”

“What’s that?”

“See if they’ve got a telly.”

“Oh, yeah, if there’s a hostage crisis or something, it’d be breaking news interrupting programming,” Curt agreed, nodding. “Good idea. Hey!” Curt waved at the bartender, who hurried over. “You guys got a TV in the back room?”

“Um…yes…?” The bartender looked at them dubiously. “Why did you want a television…?”

“We’re supposed to meet someone here, and he’s late,” Arthur explained, “and I thought he might ‘ave been delayed by some kind of catastrophe, the sort of thing that would receive live updates on all the channels.”

“Ah…well, I’ll…” The bartender glanced at the rest of the bar. It was completely devoid of patrons. “I’ll go and ask the manager,” he said, before slipping through the door to the kitchens.

They sat in silence for about five minutes before he came back. “The manager checked the television stations and the radio stations, and didn’t hear any news of anything going on,” he told them.

“He must just be running late then. Thanks.”

The bartender smiled at Arthur—smiled _too_ much—and headed back to his stool behind the center of the bar. Curt glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the room. No one was paying them the slightest bit of attention. Of course. All that shit at the door, acting like they were fans, they must have been told to do that over the intercom while Curt was still ranting in the hall outside. The guy who passed them on the stairs must have recognized Curt and set all that up…

“You don’t ‘ave to wait here with me,” Arthur said. “If you want to go mingle, there’s no reason not to.”

“But—”

“You could come right back when you see him come in. No one else is about to sit down next to me, so he’ll be hard to miss.” Oh, that was bullshit right there. Arthur was way too good-looking for that to be true. He was probably always getting propositioned by everyone in sight when he came here…

“Nah, I’m good. This crowd is too high-toned for me.”

Arthur looked uncomfortable with that answer for some reason, and started staring down at the bar in front of him. Fuck, he’d really _wanted_ Curt to push off, hadn’t he? Why couldn’t Curt ever find a man who took him seriously?

Sitting there in silence wasn’t gonna do. Curt could feel all the problems in his life dragging him down. Something ugly would happen if he let them drag him any further down, he could feel it. “Can I ask you something?” He had to do something to distract himself.

“Of course. Is something wrong?” Arthur was hard to read, but that expression _probably_ meant he was worried.

“No, just curious. What made you decide to be a reporter? It’s pretty far from being a groupie…”

Arthur chuckled weakly. “Couldn’t really make a career out of bein’ a glam groupie, could I? ’Specially not after glam went away.” He shook his head. “I suppose I could ‘ave tried to stay with the Creatures, be their manager or…I don’t know. I’d ‘ave been rubbish at it; I can’t stand up to people who want to push me around, and I ‘ave trouble talking to strangers.” He laughed sadly. “Which probably made journalism a bad choice, too, I guess.”

“So, why make that choice?”

“This will sound stupid, I suppose, but…back when I was still with the Creatures, we’d go to parties, or the houses of their friends or dealers, and I’d see these crazy newspapers. Underground papers full of sex and drugs and rebellion.”

Curt laughed. “Yeah, I remember those. Those were huge in the ‘60s, too. Wonder what happened to them all?” He’d been too high and too famous to notice or care at the time…

“Times changed, mostly. Movements fractured and fell apart, the general public became more conservative…” Arthur shrugged. “I used to love reading those. Especially when I’d go with Malcolm or Ray when they went to pick up drugs. I couldn’t take part in that, so I’d be left alone in the next room with stacks of those papers, and I’d read them over and over and think how great it would be to write for them, to make something so meaningful…”

“And yet you ended up at a standard New York paper?” Curt laughed. “Fuck, did you miss the mark!” He could at least have gone to the _Village Voice_. It wasn’t underground, but at least it was less establishment than the _Herald_.

“The mark had already gone by the time I got here,” Arthur pointed out. “Already gone by the time I was through with university, really. Only university I could get into didn’t really teach journalism, but there was at least a school newspaper, and I worked on that, tried to make it as much like the underground papers as I could, but…not everyone on that paper was as open-minded as I was.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem with being part of a team. Hard to get everyone on your page.” Curt shook his head. “Why did you have trouble getting into a good school? You’re smart, you should have been able to get in anywhere you wanted.”

Arthur laughed. “It’s never been that easy. It’s all about your grades, and your test scores, and recommendations from professors and other authority figures.” He shook his head. “My test scores were good, but I couldn’t get recommendations, and as to grades…well, I ran away to London before I finished my final year of school in Manchester. That sort of thing doesn’t look good to a university.”

“Guess it wouldn’t,” Curt agreed. “Beats me; I never tried to go to college. Dropped out of high school way before senior year, too.” He shrugged. “One of my managers forced me to take an equivalency test that serves like a high school degree, but…that’s all I’ve got.” A snort that he had intended to be a laugh. “Luckily, I’m in one of the only businesses in the world that doesn’t give a shit if you’re educated or not. You can be a fucking Neanderthal and no one cares, as long as you can sing or play an instrument. And that’s about what they think I am, too.”

“It’s not what your fans think,” Arthur assured him, setting a gentle hand on his thigh. “And no one who’s met the _real_ you would ever think that.”

“Thanks,” Curt said, dropping his good hand to cover Arthur’s. “It’s bullshit, but thanks for the thought.”

“It’s not bulls—”

“You ask anyone. Jerry, Shannon, fuck, half Brian’s crew, they all think I’m a semi-evolved caveman.”

Arthur frowned at him. “But how many of _them_ did you ever lower your guard around? How many of them ever met the _real_ you, the one I was lucky enough to meet on the rooftop the morning after back in ’75, the one I’ve been living with these past weeks?”

Curt had to look away. “Well…some of them…maybe…a little…”

“See? They don’t know the real you, and they mistake your stage persona or the drugs or the drink for who you really are. Trust me, love, no one could think that way after meeting the real you.” Arthur squeezed Curt’s hand warmly enough that despite himself, Curt found himself wanting to believe what he was saying.

They dropped back into silence after that, but it was a warmer silence, not oppressive like before. Curt was actually a bit disappointed when he heard someone clearing his throat behind them. “Sorry, am I interrupting? Should I come back later?”

Arthur let go of Curt’s hand and turned to look at the interloper. “No, it’s all right, Mark. Sit down. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

The new guy, Mark, sat down on Arthur’s other side. Either he was a plain clothes cop or he’d taken the time to change out of his uniform. Looked completely boring and ordinary. And nowhere near good-looking enough to fuck. Why would Arthur have had sex with someone like that? Had he done it just to prime him as a source of police information? Surely he couldn’t be that devious, could he?

“I can guess what you want to talk about,” Mark said, “but it’s out of my jurisdiction, so there’s not a lot I can do. And you know I’ll lose my job if you print anything about me in connection with the case.”

“Anonymous police source, I promise,” Arthur said, with a chuckle. “I’ve never printed your name before, ‘ave I?”

“No, but it’s never been this touchy before.” Mark sighed. “There’s something fucked up about the case. I looked into a bit before I left work, and it’s weirder than I thought.”

“How so?”

“I knew we were just letting him rot in pre-trial holding—everyone knows that. And I’ve heard enough people talking about it even at my precinct that I knew the idea was to let the story get so blown up by the press that he’d never get a proper trial, and no matter how the trial went it could be overturned as a mistrial due to a biased jury.”

“Are you saying the cops want that motherfucker to go free after what he did to us?!” Curt demanded.

“I don’t know if that’s what they’re after,” Mark answered, shaking his head. “It works both ways. If he’s found not guilty, they could still try to call it a mistrial, get another trial. But…something’s off about it. Honestly, I think they’re hoping he’ll be murdered in prison before he even comes to trial.”

“That I’m okay with.”

Mark chuckled.

“What did you find when you looked into it?” Arthur asked.

“They haven’t even been doing much investigating. They cleaned all his stuff out of his apartment, but no one’s really done anything with it.”

“What about that letter they found in his apartment?” Curt asked. “What the fuck was up with that?”

“The press made that up, as far as I know,” Mark told him. “I’ve seen the list of everything that was taken from the apartment, and it’s not on that list. There’s this hyper-conservative company out of Australia or somewhere that owns a lot of media, and I think it was in one of his papers that it was first printed, credited to an anonymous police source. And then all the other papers and the TV stations have just taken that first paper at its word. Only its word was a lie.”

“What about the gun?” Arthur asked. “Did they do any ballistics work?”

Mark chuckled. “Wasn’t really needed, under the circumstances. But before the investigation was shut down, someone did look into its registration number, and they found out where he’d bought it.” Mark pulled out a slip of paper from his pocket. “Bought it less than a week before the attack at a seedy gun shop over in Jersey.”

“But no one’s gone and talked to the shop owner?” Arthur asked as he accepted the paper.

“Not according to the main file,” Mark answered. “And that’s all I could access from the computer system. Maybe someone did and it didn’t get into the files. I don’t know.”

Arthur nodded, putting the paper into his own pocket. “What seems to be the general attitude of the police towards the ‘ole incident?”

“They just want it to go away.” Mark shook his head. “This shooting was a real black eye for us. We should have been able to put a stop to it faster—if those civilians hadn’t tackled the guy, a lot more people would be dead.” He sighed. “Honestly, I think we were ordered from above not to look into this, just to let the media frenzy run its course until someone in prison finally murders the guy and it can all go away.”

“From above? What level above?”

“I don’t know, but you were there, you saw the MPs, you know how they _should_ have put a stop to it and did nothing. Someone wants to keep that quiet, wants to pretend the ongoing martial law is still the best thing for the country, still preventing crime and saving lives. Even though it’s never done either of those things.” Mark frowned. “So long as the media is talking about this, the MPs and martial law can still come under attack by the press. And nothing’s going to keep the media talking about it more than seeing the trial start. If it’s left alone, it’ll die down. Or that’s what someone seems to be hoping for, anyway.”

“And that will let those motherfuckers keep saying he was just trying to wipe us out because we’re gay,” Curt said.

“That, too,” Mark sighed. “It’s an ugly situation no matter how you look at it.”

Arthur nodded. “Did you find anything else?” he asked.

Mark shook his head. “Nothing useful.”

“You never know, it might be—”

“I don’t think you care what kind of breakfast cereal he eats. Or how many pairs of sneakers they found in his closets.”

Arthur chuckled. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

Mark sighed deeply. “Are you sure you’re going to get to print this story? Who’s going to print it?”

“I’m sure I’ll find someone who won’t mind goin’ out on a limb for the scoop of the decade,” Arthur said, his voice a little tight.

Mark shrugged. “I hope you’re right. But you know Reynolds has censors in place at all the newspapers…”

“Who’d know that better than me? Don’t worry, Mark, I know what I’m doing.”

Mark didn’t sound like he believed that, but he wished Arthur good luck, then headed over to the dance floor. Curt watched him until he was deeply involved in flirting with a black guy way too good-looking for him, then looked at Arthur.

“Why the lie?” he asked quietly. “Don’t you trust him?”

Arthur squirmed under Curt’s gaze. “There’s trust and then there’s trust. I’ve been paranoid about just how far they’ll go to silence the press…” He glanced over his shoulder at Mark, who was now dancing with the black guy. “I know I shouldn’t let it instill distrust in someone I’ve had sex with, but…”

“Hey, just having sex with someone doesn’t mean they’ll always be someone you can trust.” Curt was a walking textbook on the dangers of trusting the people you fuck.

Arthur looked back at Curt with an expression like his heart was breaking. Fuck, the last thing Curt wanted was even _more_ pity… “I’m sorry,” he said, after about half a minute. “You probably want to go now, don’t you?”

Curt shrugged. “I don’t necessarily mind staying. I mean, one club’s as good as another, right?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so…?”

Curt got up off his stool. “So c’mon, let’s hit the dance floor.”

“Dance?” Arthur sounded panicked, and started clinging to his stool with his legs. “I don’t—I _can’t_ dance.”

“Hey, I’m the one with a limb in a cast.”

“Just an arm.”

Curt scowled. What the fuck was _this_ now? “Fine, whatever. _I’m_ gonna hit the dance floor. You can come with me, or you can watch me spend the whole time flirting with other guys.”

Arthur looked like he’d been slapped in the face. What was _that_ all about? He was the one who was likely to take off any second, and yet he didn’t want Curt going after anyone else? Fuck, just like Brian… “Can’t we do something other than dance…?” he asked weakly. “I’m quite rubbish at it…”

“It’s dancing or nothing.”

Reluctantly, Arthur stood up, and accepted Curt’s proffered hand. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said uncomfortably.

As he led Arthur out onto the dance floor, Curt assumed that all of Arthur’s reluctance was either an excuse or some weird form of shyness, because no one could be _that_ bad at dancing.

He quickly learned that he was wrong about that. (And he was having trouble not busting out into riotous laughter.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Initially, I thought about trying to research a real gay bar that was around in 1984 and using it as a setting, but I decided it probably would be a better idea to have the flexibility of a fictional one. Especially since information like "were they even *open* on Wednesdays?" would be especially hard to come by. :P


	13. Chapter 13

It was hard to pinpoint _exactly_ where Arthur made the wrong turning yesterday. It was obviously whatever decision he made that resulted in his being so late back, but which decision had that been? He had a long time to think about it, because he woke up quite early, but was immobilized by Curt’s arm, and couldn’t get up to go do anything productive like sorting through his notes.

Having Curt sleeping cuddled up behind him like this should have been a dream come true. If they’d been naked. And if they’d actually had sex the night before. Unfortunately, neither of those was the case. There hadn’t even been any particular pretence that they were _going_ to have sex. Then again, after Arthur had made such a fool of himself on the dance floor, of course sex was out of the question.

It would have been anyway, of course. Curt wasn’t interested in him except as a companion while he was healing. The pretence of romantic interest was just so he wouldn’t have to pay Arthur to act as a nurse. Or maybe to soothe his own ego so he wouldn’t have to admit that he _needed_ a live-in companion. That seemed much more likely. Curt wasn’t hurting for money, after all. He could have easily paid a real nurse to stay with him, if he’d been willing to admit that he needed more than just help getting dressed.

The only real question in Arthur’s mind was just what had happened in the lead-up to the blowjob the other day. When Arthur had made it so obvious that he was expecting Curt to be thinking about Brian—and as he undoubtedly actually had been—why did he claim to be thinking about Arthur’s teenage self? Arthur doubted Curt _really_ even remembered their encounter after the Death of Glitter concert; on that first day in hospital, Curt had rather manipulated the conversation to ensure that Arthur would fully describe it, letting Curt pretend he remembered. Arthur had been an idiot to ever assume that Curt would have bothered to remember an encounter with such a meaningless, pathetic boy.

At least this time, he wouldn’t be so stupid. This time, he already knew that Curt wouldn’t remember him in ten years’ time. But knowing that did nothing to stop him from wanting more than just fleeting, hollow companionship. The more he got to know the real Curt, the more he wanted this to be a genuine relationship, and one that would last…

Curt finally waking up did nothing to make Arthur feel better about his situation. He rose and went into the loo without a word—without even looking to see if Arthur was awake or still asleep. Rather than wait for him to be finished, Arthur used one of the others, and was already making breakfast by the time Curt came into the kitchen. Curt sat down at the table, still silent, and just sat there until Arthur finally put his breakfast down in front of him.

About halfway through breakfast—and on his second cup of coffee—Curt finally spoke. (Arthur had already decided that _he_ was not going to be the first one to say something.) “You’re not planning on going to Jersey to look for whoever sold him that gun, are you?” he asked.

“Of course. There’s no point in knowin’ where it came from if I don’t follow up.”

“And how were you planning on getting there?” The tone of Curt’s voice was challenging, but also rather patronising.

“There are plenty of buses that run there and back every day.” How else was he going to get there? The subway didn’t extend that far, and taking a taxi would be ludicrously expensive.

Curt let out a disappointed sigh. “That’s a good way to get killed.”

“Don’t be melodramatic.”

“I’m not.” Curt shook his head. “People know your face now. Every time we go out together, even just walking down the street to the salon to get my hair washed, people see us, and there’s usually at least one person who takes a picture. By now, your face has probably been plastered in at least a dozen different tabloid articles as my boyfriend.”

“Even though I’m not,” Arthur muttered, giving in just a little to the sourness that had been consuming him over the last few hours.

Curt winced. Had he really thought Arthur was as fooled as the rest of the world? “If it’s a gun shop a _cop_ would describe as seedy, it’s probably in a shit neighbourhood” Curt went on, as if Arthur hadn’t said anything. “You’ve got at least a fifty-fifty chance of being recognised by everyone who sees you, and in an area like that, the chances are much higher that the person recognising you is gonna be some kind of gay-basher. Fuck, you wouldn’t even have to meet anyone on the street! The guy at the gun shop might just kill you outright.”

“That seems unlikely.” Not that Arthur could entirely discount the possibility…

Curt shrugged. “Even if he doesn’t, what if he’s got other customers?”

“Then what, Curt? You want me to abandon such a crucial lead? Or are you hopin’ I’ll be able to send someone else to conduct the interview for me?”

“Actually, yeah, that sounds good. You got hired to write for a magazine, right? Ask them to send one of their other guys down there, someone who won’t be in danger from the locals.”

Arthur sighed, shaking his head. “I got hired as a freelancer; we don’t get back-up. Especially not for a story we’re writin’ on our own initiative. I’m sorry, but I ‘ave to go.”

“Well, you can’t go alone, or you’ll come back a corpse,” Curt insisted. “I’m going with you.”

“That’s no way to keep a low profile,” Arthur said. “Me, people _might_ recognise. You, they _will_ recognise. Not to mention that I can’t imagine what the world would say if it saw you gettin’ on a bus to New Jersey.”

“We’re not taking the fucking bus. And I’ll be incognito; they won’t recognise me. And even if they did, your average thug is a lot less likely to attack a celebrity than they are a regular person.”

Arthur certainly couldn’t deny that, and yet… “All right, if we’re not takin’ a bus, then how do _you_ plan to get us there?” he asked, changing the subject slightly. Suddenly, it felt like a fight, and he rather wanted to win for once.

“I’ll call for a car. Phil’s got people lined up who provide cars and drivers. We’ll get one with tinted windows in the back, and make sure the driver’s also a qualified bodyguard. Someone who could legally take steps to stop anyone who might try to attack one of us.”

Arthur hesitated, prodding his breakfast with a fork to delay answering. He didn’t actually see any holes in that plan. It just felt so _wrong_ , being chauffeured to an interview as if there was something special about him, when he was the most plain, ordinary, boring bloke in the world. (Ordinary other than being gay, at any rate.) “What kind of car? It would stand out too much if we—”

“They’ve got plain cars,” Curt said, cutting him off. “I’ll explain where we’re going, and they’ll pick a car that won’t stand out too much. Probably a Cadillac.”

“A Cadillac with tinted windows? People will think we’re the mafia.”

“Hey, can you think of a better way to keep them from attacking us than making ‘em think we’re mobsters?” Curt asked, with a bit of a grin.

Arthur laughed. “No, I suppose not.”

Curt smiled widely. “Okay, then, that’s settled. I’ll call Phil as soon as we’re done eating. You make sure you’re all set for the interview. Know what to ask and everything.”

“I’ve been doing this for years, Curt. I never go into an interview unprepared.”

Curt didn’t entirely seem to believe that, but he didn’t challenge it, and resumed eating his breakfast. Once they were done, he went off to ring his manager while Arthur was rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher. The dishes turned out to be the shorter task, so Arthur was already looking for something to wear in Curt’s closet before Curt was done on the telephone. Really, he should have worn something of his own, but most of it needed washing—he’d let the laundry slide the past few days—and it was hard to be sure what the best choice was. He definitely didn’t want to look gay (though how one looked straight, exactly, was a question utterly beyond him) but should he try to look like what people expected a serious, professional journalist would look like, some combination of a television newsreader and Robert Redford in _All the President’s Men_? Or should he try to look like someone who would actually belong in a gun shop, to put the store owner off his guard? Ultimately, Arthur was so unsure of the answer that he actually asked Curt for his opinion.

“Like it fucking matters? As soon as you pull out your notebook, he’s gonna know you don’t belong there. Hell, just going in there with your purse is gonna—”

“It’s a satchel, not a purse!”

Curt sighed. “Just wear whatever you’d normally wear to an interview with the scum of the earth.”

“I don’t normally interview the scum of the earth.”

“But I thought you said you used to cover politics all the time.”

Arthur stared at him for a moment, then laughed. “All right, I suppose I did,” he said, shaking his head. “Fine, you win. I’ll just dress normally. But what are _you_ plannin’ on wearing?”

“I’ve got a drawer full of shit to wear to be incognito,” Curt assured him, going over to the drawer in question. “Oh, fuck. I can’t wear most of it with this arm.” He scowled, then withdrew a denim jacket, rumpled and creased from being jammed in that drawer for goodness only knew how long. “Guess I could use this to cover it.”

“Bit warm out for a jacket,” Arthur pointed out, as he started changing out of his pyjamas and into what he was going to wear for the day.

“Yeah, but if I go in there with my arm in this cast, it’ll draw too much attention to me. With this, hopefully I’ll just look like I’m a shifty guy who doesn’t want to be seen.”

Arthur chuckled; in a way, that was exactly what Curt was proposing to be. “I think you should be worrying more about what’s above your collar, not below it.” Between face and hair, Curt stood out. A lot.

“Oh, no sweat there,” Curt assured him, setting aside the jacket so he could reach back into the drawer. He pulled out an object made of dark blue cloth. “Here we go,” he announced, then put the object on his head. It was a baseball cap with the logo of the Mets on the front, and Curt pulled it down so far that it shaded his face entirely…and also pressed all of his hair directly straight down from the brim, as if he was some kind of hair monster.

Arthur did his best to repress a very loud laugh, but enough came out to make Curt scowl and remove the hat again. “I don’t think that’ll make you _less_ noticeable…”

“Yeah, maybe not like that. Lemme just…uh…fuck. Can you pull my hair back? It’s pretty hard to do it right without being able to use the other hand to hold the elastic.”

“Of course.” Arthur obediently fetched the comb and elastic from the main part of the bedroom, and set about pulling Curt’s hair back _again_. The task was pleasant enough, but it was beginning to grate on his nerves the way Curt kept explaining why he needed help, when he needed that same help every single morning. Besides, why was he explaining that at all, when Arthur’s whole reason to be there was to provide just that kind of help?

Once Arthur had gotten Curt’s hair pulled back, Curt put the cap back on, pulling the brim down again after he had swept his long fringe aside out of his face. “There, see?” he said. “Much less conspicuous.”

“I suppose so,” Arthur agreed, shaking his head. Curt’s face was only minimally hidden this way…but perhaps as long as no one got close enough to really look at him…

After they finally finished getting ready—Arthur had to help Curt with his jacket, too, fastening the top button after he slipped his good arm through the sleeve—Arthur barely had time to do more than make sure everything he needed was in his satchel before the doorman rang them up to let them know the car Curt had ordered had arrived. As they left the building, Arthur saw that Curt had been quite right about the car: it was a black Cadillac with tinted windows. The man standing beside the car and opening the back door for them was even dressed rather like a mafia enforcer. (Maybe Curt had specifically _asked_ for that look?)

“Hey, Fred,” Curt said as they got close. “How’s the family?”

“They’re quite well, Mr. Wild. Thanks for asking.” The driver/bodyguard paused. “Are you sure you gave the right address? It’s not a very nice area…”

“It’s the right address,” Curt assured him, before getting into the car.

Arthur followed him into the car, and they were soon setting off towards New Jersey. It was a longer ride than he was expecting—in part because morning rush hour was not yet over—and he was feeling quite antsy for most of the ride. The fact that the only conversation being had was the driver telling Curt about his wife’s catering business and how glad he would be when his children were back in school did not help, of course. Curt not only wasn’t paying attention to it, but seemed to be falling asleep.

When they finally reached their destination, Arthur found himself wishing he _had_ called Mr. Nathan to see if someone else could come conduct this interview for him. They were on the outskirts of the spill-over of New York City into New Jersey, just on the edge between where civilisation became wilderness, and that particular section of the edge was especially lacking in prosperity. The gun shop—which had a very large picture window with the words “GUN SHOP” painted across it, and no other signage of any kind—was housed in an old concrete building with half-dead grass poking up through dozens of cracks in the parking lot, and a few dead trees here and there surrounding the building, as if the building was leaking poison into the surrounding atmosphere and killing everything that came close.

Without turning the engine off, the driver turned to look at Curt with a worried expression on his face. “Mr. Wild, I know it’s not my place to say so, but you should reconsider. This isn’t the answer. I get that you want to protect yourself after what happened, but meeting violence with violence—guns with guns—is only going to make the situation worse. If you’re feeling that threatened, hire more bodyguards, don’t—”

Curt laughed, cutting him off. “Remind me to call Phil when we get back and have him give you a raise,” he said. “Don’t worry, okay? That’s not what we’re doing here. This is where that motherfucker bought the gun that shattered my arm. Arthur’s gonna interview the owner, and expose everything in an article. Really gonna change the way the press is talking about the attack.”

The driver looked at Arthur uncertainly. “All we want is information,” Arthur assured him. “Your concern for Curt’s safety is touching, though,” he added, smiling. It felt like someone needed to say it, and he had a feeling Curt wasn’t going to.

Though he didn’t seem entirely reassured, the driver went ahead and turned off the engine. “You want me to come in with you, Mr. Wild?” he asked.

“That’s probably taking it too far,” Curt said, shaking his head. “There’s no other cars, so there can’t be more than one guy in there. And you’ll be able to see through the window if anything’s happening. Besides, I’m in disguise. They won’t know who I am.”

Arthur nearly choked on the claim that a baseball cap and a denim jacket counted as a disguise. “I don’t think you need to come in with me at all,” Arthur said. “As you say, there isn’t likely to be more than one man inside. I’ll be fine on my own.” He had, after all, gone off on his own to some very dangerous neighbourhoods in search of information over the years, and had only been mugged once or twice in the process.

“Fuck that! I’m going in first,” Curt insisted. “If he thinks I’m a customer, he’ll be less likely to try anything.”

“I’m not sure that’s—”

“It’s not up for debate,” Curt said, before getting out of the vehicle and immediately heading towards the shop.

The driver sighed. “I’ve been driving for him for almost ten years now, and he still won’t listen to reason.” He shook his head. “Can’t get my name right, either. It’s Frank, not Fred. I’ve given up on trying to correct him.”

Arthur laughed. “At least he treats you as a person, and not just part of the car.”

“Well, that’s true.”

Arthur got out of the car, and was surprised to see Frank get out as well, taking up a position half-leaning, half-sitting on the hood of the car, arms crossed, and glaring through the window of the gun shop. It made him look even more like an enforcer for the mob.

When Arthur entered the shop, he saw that Curt was examining a rack of hunting rifles along the side wall, very near the window, and the man behind the counter was watching him with a pleased smile on his face. The man was not quite what Arthur had been expecting: rather than a beefy ex-con with swastikas tattooed on his arms, he was a scrawny man in his sixties, with short white hair and a patchily-shaved face above grimy clothes that looked like they hadn’t been washed since Nixon was in office. The man turned to look at Arthur, and smiled wider, exposing about half as many teeth as Arthur was expecting to see.

“What a morning! Welcome! What are you looking for, young man?”

“Are you the owner?” Arthur asked, walking over to the table.

“That’s me, thirty-five years running. Looking for some self-defense against us Yanks?” the owner asked, with a rasping laugh.

Arthur shook his head. “I’m a journalist. I was hopin’ to interview you.”

The shop owner’s eyes widened, then he laughed again. “Go on ahead, then. Just give me a good review,” he added with a wink. “Which magazine do you work for? _Guns ‘n’ Ammo_? _Firearms Monthly_?”

“I’m freelance,” Arthur told him, getting out his tape recorder. He pressed the record button, and turned the microphone towards the old man. “Now, just for the record, you said you’re the owner of this store, yes?”

“That’s right. Like I said, been thirty-five years now.”

“And are you always the one running the counter?”

“You betcha! Don’t trust no one, that’s my motto,” the shop owner said, nodding as if he thought it was sage advice. “If I ain’t here, we ain’t open.”

“Then do you remember this man?” Arthur fished into his pocket for a photograph of Rick Johnson that one of Johnson’s former employers had provided. It was the photo for his work ID rather than his mug shot; he still looked quite deranged, but it didn’t automatically skew the conversation towards criminal activities, just in case this man somehow hadn’t seen all the countless news reports about what had been done with the gun he had sold.

The owner took the photo and brought it closer to his face, peering at it, then nodded, handing it back. “Sure do. He was in here beginning of the month, or maybe it was the end of last month? Don’t remember the exact day. Why?”

Arthur just stared at him for a moment, astonished out of his script. He could hear Curt heading towards them with heavy footfalls. “You don’t watch the news or read the papers?” Arthur asked.

“Can’t trust ‘em,” the shop owner said. “I get all my news from the only source I trust.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a newsletter sent out by the GOAoA.”

“Is that a name, or are you having a seizure?” Curt asked, now directly behind Arthur.

“Please, don’t interrupt,” Arthur begged, turning to look at him. “I can handle this. _Really_.”

Curt sighed, and shook his head, moving over to a low counter nearby. He slid aside the hunting knives on the counter and sat down on it, watching the shop owner with a cold glare.

“That a friend of yours?” the old man asked.

“Yes, you could say that,” Arthur said, trying to smile at him. “But could you repeat the name of the person or group you said was sending out that newsletter? And maybe spell it? I’m not sure I caught it the first time.”

The shop owner sighed. “It’s an acronym. Stands for Gun Owners Alliance of America. They’re sorta like the NRA, only not so soft.”

Arthur repressed a shudder at the very notion. “I see. And have they sent out one of those newsletters lately?”

“Send ‘em out the first of the month, like clockwork.”

Pity. If a group like that was ignoring the attack, it would add yet another layer to the article. But perhaps that was best left to someone else with a bit more ability to finesse interview subjects. “Well, perhaps it’s for the best,” Arthur said. “Can you tell me what you remember about the man in the photo?”

The shop owner shrugged. “He didn’t know much about guns, but he knew what he wanted. Didn’t take long to get him set up with exactly what he needed.”

“Did he tell you what he wanted it for?”

“Didn’t say anything,” the owner replied, utterly casually. “Assumed he wanted to go hunting.”

“Hunting?!” Curt repeated. Or rather shouted. “The fuck good would it do to go hunting with a goddamn machine gun?!”

“Can’t miss the deer that way, can you?”

“Wouldn’t be anything _left_ of the deer if you shot it with that thing.”

“You don’t know much about guns, do you, boy?” the shop owner said, glaring at Curt.

“My old man went hunting every weekend of my life,” Curt replied. “And he never used a fucking machine gun. He always used a rifle. The one time my brother went out with a shotgun, we were all having to pull shot out of our meat for a week.”

The old man nodded, looking impressed. “Still, you _can_ go hunting with a more powerful gun. You just have to be careful to ease off the trigger as soon as you think you’ve hit something.”

“That’s not really important right now,” Arthur said firmly. This was the last thing he wanted to be wasting his time on! “Are you saying that you get a lot of customers here who buy guns for hunting purposes?”

“Of course.”

“You’re aware that there probably isn’t any game within a hundred miles of here?”

“Ten miles, tops,” the shop owner insisted. And unfortunately Arthur didn’t actually have the data to argue with him. Maybe he could look it up later…

Arthur sighed. “Suppose it doesn’t matter. Do you remember anything else about the man? Anything strike you about the way he talked, the way he behaved, things like that?”

The old man laughed. “Well, he did seem a mite crazy,” he admitted, “but so what? No law against selling guns to a crazy person.”

“You motherfucker!” Curt shouted, leaping back to his feet. “You _knew_ he was nuts and you sold it to him anyway?!”

“What is _wrong_ with your friend?” the owner asked, giving Arthur a cold look.

“You wanna know what’s wrong with me?” Curt demanded, stalking up beside Arthur, then pushing aside the jacket over his cast. “That gun _you_ sold to that nutcase shattered my arm—and slaughtered a dozen people!”

The owner of the store just regarded Curt passively for about ten seconds, then turned to Arthur. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave my store now.”

“Yes, we’ll be going,” Arthur agreed, retrieving his tape recorder. “Thank you for your time and your candour.”

He grabbed Curt by his good arm, and started dragging him towards the door. Thankfully, Curt didn’t resist, and they were soon safely outside. Frank was about halfway to the door of the shop, looking worried.

“What happened in there?” he asked.

“Just get in the car and start it going,” Arthur said. “We might be in trouble soon.”

Frank nodded, and sprinted back to the car.

“I really don’t think he’s gonna do anything,” Curt said.

As if in reaction to Curt’s words, a heavy metal shutter slid down over the front of the gun shop with a loud, reverberating clang, hiding both windows and door. They both hurried back to the car as quickly as they could.

Whatever the owner of the shop might or might not have had planned, he didn’t do it fast enough, and the three of them were soon on the road back to New York. “I swear, Mr. Wild, you took ten years off my life just now,” Frank said, once they were safely across the state line and hidden away in the sea of traffic.

“Mine, too,” Curt admitted, with an uncomfortable laugh. “Kind of a problem; I doubt I had too many years to spare.”

“Don’t say that,” Arthur begged.

“The guys running the rehab centre all say that the damage you’ve done with drugs never goes away. I probably lost half my life to all that shit.”

“I don’t want to think about that,” Arthur said, putting his arm around Curt’s shoulders and pulling him closer.

“I’d really like to know what happened in there,” Frank repeated, interrupting them.

“He just didn’t appreciate learning what was done with the gun he sold to Rick Johnson,” Arthur said.

“Bet he called up a bunch of his clients to come deal with us,” Curt added, shaking his head. “You’ve heard of that group he gets his news from, right?”

“No, it’s not familiar to me,” Arthur admitted, feeling deeply ashamed that Curt could know something news-related that he didn’t.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Honestly, I didn’t know it had gotten as far as New York.”

“What is it?”

Curt frowned. “Trying to think of the best way to put it. Okay, you were still in England at the time, but I’m sure you know about some of the crazy shit that happened in the US in the ‘60s and ‘70s, right? The violent shit, not the fun shit, I mean.”

“It’s not as though the United States was the only country going through upheavals at the time,” Arthur pointed out. “Of course I know about it.”

“Well, this group of racist motherfuckers in…I think it started in Minnesota, rather than Michigan, but I’m not sure about that. Northern Midwest somewhere, anyway. They were convinced that the Black Panthers were gonna be rampaging through the whole country killing every white person they saw.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Of course it is, but they’re inbred racists, what do you expect?” Curt laughed. “Anyway, they wanted to create a white self-defense group with the express purpose of shooting any armed blacks they saw, only they were too northern to just admit they wanted to join the Klan. So they made their own group. They originally called it the White Guns of the North or some shit.” Curt shook his head. “I don’t know all the details, ‘cause it all went down long after I ran off to New York, so I only got the story from Angie. And you can guess how reliable _she_ is. But she said most of the men in the trailer park joined it, including our father, brother and all five uncles. I honestly think she expected me to run off to join it, too. Even though I was dating a black guy at the time.” He laughed again, louder.

“What happened in the end?” Arthur asked.

“They got tired of waiting for the Black Panthers to show up, and about a third of ‘em went to a heavily black neighbourhood in Detroit, planning some ethnic cleansing. Thankfully, they made their plans in advance, someone let the Detroit cops know, and the locals got hold of the news, too.”

“Please tell me they avoided a bloodbath.”

“Well, not many innocents got shot,” Curt said, “but pretty much everyone who went to go shoot up the neighbourhood ended up getting shot themselves. Anyway, after that, the group claimed to disband, but really they just changed their name. According to Angie.”

“Just changing their name was enough to let them escape justice?”

“That’s how it was; no matter how bad you think things are now, they were worse back then. Racial violence committed _by_ the police was everywhere. Only reason they stopped the mob from the gun group was that it was going to make the police department look bad if they let it happen.”

Arthur shut his eyes, trying not to think about it. “Sounds like someone needs to do a full article reporting on this group’s infiltration of the east coast,” he said, opening them again, “but I don’t think I want to be the one to do it.” All this talk of shootings had the sounds of the attack in the park ringing in his ears.

“Good. I don’t think I could handle that,” Curt said, leaning in closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope there aren't actual magazines with the titles the shop owner suggested.
> 
> I've been reading a lot lately about the side of the '60s that Curt was talking about...hence why it ended up in the story.


	14. Chapter 14

By the time Curt got off the phone with Phil, Arthur had already installed himself at the dining room table, with a pad of blank paper in front of him, and scraps of paper spread out across the entire rest of the table, as if his notebook had exploded. “The fuck are you doing?” Curt asked, peering over his shoulder. God, Arthur’s handwriting was awful; he couldn’t read a word of it.

“I’m trying to organize my thoughts,” Arthur explained. “Figure out what I need to say, and what order I need to say it in.”

“How long’s that going to take?”

“No idea,” Arthur admitted. “It’s a more complicated story than I’m used to, and writing for a magazine’s a bit different than for a daily newspaper.”

“So you’re still going to be here by the time lunch is delivered,” Curt concluded.

Arthur laughed. “I’ll be lucky to be finished by dinner.”

Curt groaned. What a boring day this was going to turn out to be! (Aside from the excitement of the expedition to New Jersey.) “Can I help at all?” He wanted to do _something_ , but…

“Unfortunately not.” Curt had a feeling the real answer was that the only way he could help was to stay out of the way. Which was not the answer he wanted at all, but…there wasn’t really much else to do anyway.

After going into the kitchen for a beer—fuck the doctor’s orders!—and to order a pizza for lunch, Curt went into the TV room and collapsed onto the couch. He didn’t even bother picking up the remote and turning on the tube. There wouldn’t be shit on even if he did.

He should, he knew, be working on writing a song. Or a lot of songs. But he really wasn’t sure he could. Not yet. Instead, he tried to come up with what in the world he could write a song _about_. He hadn’t bothered writing any new ones for the concert, even though he’d been specifically asked to. It wasn’t so easy to write new songs anymore as it used to be. Breaking up with Brian hadn’t really hampered his ability to write—in some ways it had actually helped, even if half the songs were so shitty he hadn’t bothered trying to record them—but seeing Brian transform himself into everything they used to hate… _that_ had pretty much hamstrung Curt’s ability to write. He’d only put out one album since then, and it had been garbage. (The only time he’d ever agreed with the critics’ assessment of one of his albums.)

Phil said the label wanted Curt to put out a new solo album as soon as possible, along with the double-size album of duets with everyone who had answered Brian’s call. Easy for him to say! How was Curt supposed to write all those songs while he was in this state? And the label wanted him in the recording booth by the end of the year. That was just bullshit; even at his best, he’d have had trouble writing enough songs for a full album in that length of time. They could maybe get away with one or two cuts on the album being new versions of classic old songs. New orchestrations, new lyrics, whatever worked to make them a bit more “modern” and justify their taking up the space. But that was only one or two cuts. He could never do enough of them to fill an album; the label would never allow it and no one would buy it even if they did.

Maybe he could also slip in a cover of someone else’s song. Something appropriate. If he could _think_ of anything appropriate.

Curt had almost fallen asleep on the couch when he heard the doorbell. He hadn’t realized it had gotten so late! “I’ll get it,” he shouted, so Arthur wouldn’t have to leave off working on his article until they were actually ready to eat.

But when he answered the door, it wasn’t the delivery guy on the other side. It was Brian—no, Tommy Stone. He hadn’t been Brian for years.

“What…?”

“I’d rather not talk in the hall.”

“Oh, yeah, c’mon in.” Curt didn’t _really_ want Tommy in his apartment right now, but he couldn’t send him away. He led the way to the sound booth, shutting the door behind them, so nothing they said in there could get back to Arthur’s ears. “So what is it?”

“I’ve finished another draft of the song,” Tommy explained, taking an envelope out of the interior pocket of his jacket (wasn’t he hot in that thing in summer?), and handing it to Curt. “And Kevin called me.”

Curt winced. “I don’t wanna know what he said.”

Brian’s soft, gentle smile. “They’re worried about you, Curt. So am I.”

Curt sighed. “Not much I can do about it.”

“You need a change of scene. Or of company.”

“It’s not Arthur’s fault.” Curt was positive of that.

“His very presence is reminding you of the attack.”

“So’s this fucking cast on my arm!”

Brian laughed. “Well, that’s true,” he admitted. “But are you really so smitten with that boy that you won’t hear of sending him away?”

“It’s not…it’s not that simple.” Curt shook his head. “Look, don’t worry, okay? He’s not…actually interested. In me.”

“I find that impossible to believe.”

“It’s true.” Unfortunately, Curt had no doubts about it. Arthur hadn’t even made the slightest suggestion that they might try to have sex last night.

“That is completely contrary to everything he had to say on the subject.”

Curt’s heart started pounding. Could that be true? “Really?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level.

“You really _are_ smitten with him.” Brian sounded disappointed. “ _Why_?”

Curt shook his head. “He’s just hot, that’s all…”

“Yes, he is, but…not enough for you to become so infatuated.”

“You didn’t see him as a teenager. God, he was so fucking beautiful!” Curt laughed. “He was your type, too. You’d have fucked him in a heartbeat.”

“Yes, I’m sure I would have. But…” He sighed deeply. “Don’t let yourself fall in love with him. You don’t need the heartbreak.”

“Who the _fuck_ do you think you are, talking to _me_ about heartbreak?!”

“I’m an expert on the subject,” Brian insisted. “From both sides,” he added, in a more humble tone. “I don’t want to see anyone else hurt you like I did.”

Curt had to look away. “Don’t worry. They can’t.” No matter what he was feeling for Arthur right now—though he didn’t think Brian’s ‘smitten’ assessment was at all right—it could never match up to what he had felt for Brian. He wasn’t capable of falling that deeply in love twice.

To his surprise, Curt suddenly felt Brian’s arms encircling him. “You know, I still love you.” The words were whispered in his ear, hot breath against his skin.

“What good does that do?” Curt asked, trying desperately not to think about it. “We both know you can’t act on it.” If he was still Brian Slade, they could get back together, but no one would stand for Tommy Stone, the icon of conservatism, turning out to be bisexual.

“I just thought you needed to know it.” A weak laugh as Tommy let go of him. “Shannon would never stand for it if I tried to act on it, even in secret, of course.”

“I don’t get why you keep her around. There’s gotta be other people who’d do a better job.”

“I’m sure there are. But they wouldn’t match her devotion.”

Curt shrugged. He wasn’t sure if devotion was quite the right word; obsession might be a better one. “Whatever you call it, try and keep her from looking at me like I’m the devil incarnate, will ya? Drives me up the fucking wall. I never did shit to her and she still acts like I’m the embodiment of all evil.”

“I’ve spoken to her about it before. But I’ll try again.”

A light lit up on the wall of the sound booth. “Looks like the pizza’s here,” Curt commented. “I ordered plenty. Why don’t you join us?”

Tommy frowned. “You, singular, I would be glad to join for a meal. You, plural, I am not prepared to join.”

“If we’re gonna be working together, you’ll have to get used to Arthur being around. I’m not sending him away.” And hopefully he wouldn’t leave on his own… “What do you have against him, anyway? You can’t be _that_ jealous.”

Tommy bristled. “I am not jealous at all.”

“Then what is it?”

“He has now twice tried to expose me. Am I supposed to overlook that?”

Curt sighed. “Yeah, you are. What you’re doing is stupid and fucked up, and he’s trying to make you be _honest_ again. You used to be all about telling the truth, remember?”

Tommy subtly avoided his gaze. “Only on certain subjects.” He turned towards the door out of the booth. “We should get the door, or your food will be taken away again.”

“I’m sure Arthur got it a long time ago,” Curt sighed. “Changing the subject isn’t gonna change anything else.”

“You changed it first.”

Curt paused, thinking back over their conversation. “I did?”

“You didn’t say if your own feelings had changed.”

Curt sighed. “I didn’t know I was expected to. Didn’t think I _needed_ to.” Wasn’t it pretty fucking obvious?

Tommy started to answer, but Curt was distracted by the sight of Arthur timidly poking his head into the control room on the other side of the soundproof glass. He cast an uncomfortable glance at Tommy, but Curt gestured him forward. Arthur headed over to the control panel, and started peering at it. Probably looking for the communications button.

Laughing, Curt opened the door to the booth. “What’s up?” he asked, even though he knew perfectly well what.

“The pizza you ordered is here,” Arthur told him. “You know, you really eat far too much pizza.”

“Just how long did you say you’d lived in this city?” Curt asked, surprised. Didn’t everyone know pizza was like a food group all to itself in New York?

“Long enough to know that there’s much more available than just pizza and take-out Chinese,” Arthur replied, almost testily.

“I also eat burgers.” Even to Curt, it sounded petulant. But he didn’t have much excuse for the general monotony of his diet. It was just what was easiest. Wasn’t that what everyone did when they weren’t being watched by the whole world?

“It’s very unhealthy,” Arthur insisted, shaking his head.

Surprisingly, Tommy started laughing. “Maybe you’ve found your own Shannon,” he suggested in a whisper right into Curt’s ear.

“Fuck, don’t scare me like that!” Curt shouted, shuddering. The idea of getting saddled with someone like her was terrifying.

At least Tommy seemed to have dropped his objections to Arthur, even if only temporarily. He left the sound booth and headed into the dining room without a word, and without casting any hateful glares in Arthur’s direction as he passed.

“Curt…?” Arthur asked, as Curt also stepped out of the booth. “Did I interrupt something…?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t anything…” Curt let out a deep breath, trying to find the right word to use that would be reassuring without being a lie. He couldn’t say it wasn’t important, because how could a conversation with Brian not be important? And yet what they were saying hadn’t been anything particularly… “Don’t worry, okay? We were about to come out to lunch anyway.” He gestured at the light on the wall. “There’s a signal in there that lets me know if someone rings the doorbell. In case I’m recording when I’m home alone.” Not that there was any risk of that _these_ days.

“Oh, right, of course. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry, you didn’t have any way of knowing.”

Arthur nodded, and they started walking towards the kitchen. “Is…ah… _he_ stayin’ to eat?”

“I’m not sure,” Curt admitted. “I offered. His answer was sorta…not an answer. You’re okay with it if he does, right?”

“Mostly.” From the look on Arthur’s face, it was definitely fear rather than jealousy that had him offering any objections.

They hadn’t gone too much further before Tommy reappeared, headed towards them. “Your table is covered with a complete jumble of scraps of paper,” he informed Curt. It was the Tommy Stone voice, even though he _knew_ (several times over!) that Arthur knew he was really Brian. Son of a bitch didn’t want to give Arthur the satisfaction, probably.

“It’s the notes for a story I’m workin’ on,” Arthur explained. “We’ll ‘ave to eat in the kitchen.”

Tommy turned without a word and went into the kitchen. “Guess he’s staying,” Curt said, shaking his head. Arthur nodded, but didn’t reply.

By the time they arrived in the kitchen, Tommy had fetched three plates out of the cabinets (since when did Brian ever do such menial tasks himself?), and was looking inside Curt’s refrigerator. “Your choice of drinks is even more limited than your choice of food,” he commented, closing it again.

“Hey, there’s more in there than there was before I got shot,” Curt commented, taking a seat at the table. “You can thank Arthur for the milk and the orange juice. All I used to keep on hand was beer and the occasional pop.”

“Pop,” Tommy repeated, with a barely repressed laugh.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. I don’t give a shit if it makes me a pariah. I’ve always called it pop, and I’m always gonna, and anyone who doesn’t like it can bite me.”

“So…provincial.”

“You’re not supposed to be ‘aving alcohol right now,” Arthur butted in, ignoring the entire issue of Curt’s Michigan vocabulary, “and you’ve already cheated once today, so you’ll not be doin’ it again while I’m here. So what _do_ you want to drink?”

Curt cast a glance over at Tommy, and laughed. “I’ll have a pop.” What was wrong with a little harmless antagonism among exes?

Arthur sighed, shaking his head. “Speaking of unhealthy,” he muttered, before opening the refrigerator. He took out not only a can of pop, but also an old Fiestaware pitcher that Curt used to use to mix up some rather unsavory drug cocktails, and hadn’t personally used since getting out of rehab. After setting the pop down in front of Curt, Arthur looked at Tommy. “I’ve got some iced tea here, if you’d like a glass.”

Tommy regarded him with some surprise, then nodded, taking another seat at the little square table. “That doesn’t sound bad at all,” he replied.

Arthur smiled almost too happily, and set the pitcher down to fetch glasses out of the cabinets. Curt sighed as he watched him. “To think my fridge would be used for fucking ice tea,” he moaned. “I’ve sunk to a new low!”

“What’s so wrong with iced tea?” Arthur asked, as he returned the pitcher to the fridge.

“You have any idea what my fans would think if they knew there was a pitcher of homemade ice tea in my fridge?”

“You could always claim it had been made with marijuana leaves,” Tommy suggested, with a laugh. “That would be quite acceptable to them. Might even start a trend.”

Curt laughed as he opened his can. “I bet it would.” He took a swallow, then leaned back in his chair. “I wonder what that’d be like?”

“Probably disgusting,” Arthur said, setting the two glasses of ice tea on the table. “I don’t think they would seep very well. It would probably just end up as water with leaves in.”

“I should try it at a party sometime,” Curt commented, opening the box of pizza. “Make it a game to see who could manage to choke down the most of it without puking.”

“Very classy,” Tommy commented in a tone of opprobrious sarcasm.

“Hey, total lack of class is my whole image.”

“For a very brief window, it was something much more than that.”

“Yeah, it was being your pet wolf.” Curt shook his head. “Only thing that changed was that I dressed tonier. And sold more records.” He chuckled, pulling a slice out of the box. “Can’t complain about that part.”

Tommy sighed. “Jerry never did like you.”

“And the feeling was mutual.”

Tommy—no, Brian—laughed. Then he opened his mouth, about to speak, until a glance in Arthur’s direction shut it again. He put a piece of pizza on his plate and started cutting it with a knife and fork (which he must have gotten out along with the plates, though Curt hadn’t noticed them on the table).

“Fuck, really?” Curt sighed. “Please tell me you don’t do that in public.”

“Do you honestly think I’d eat something with tomato sauce in public in this outfit?” Tommy replied, sounding downright horrified.

“So why do you dress that way, then?” Brian liked Italian food, but hated white sauce…

Tommy shrugged. “The costume—the _look_ —was selected by a team of designers and market researchers. I’ve never cared for it, but the people like it. Allegedly.”

“You always used to pick your look yourself. You never wore anything you didn’t like.”

“That was no longer an option. You know that.” Tommy pointed his fork at Curt. “Besides, you’ve changed _your_ look, too.”

“Uh…yeah, in that I don’t paint my nails anymore or wear eyeliner. That’s pretty much it.” Curt took a bite of his pizza, considering. “Well, okay, yeah, I don’t wear dog collars much anymore, and it’s all black and brown leather, no more gold or silver. But the gold and silver came from you, and those other things are pretty petty details compared to dressing like St. Peter on his way to a night out in Vegas!”

A brief burst of unrestrained laughter was quickly stifled as Arthur clamped his hand over his mouth, looking ashamed of himself.

“Ironically,” Tommy said, ignoring Arthur entirely, “Las Vegas stage managers always feel I’m underdressed and need more flash.”

Curt chuckled. “Yeah, they’re like that. Last time I toured through Vegas, they wanted me to wear a sequined cape over my regular outfit.”

Tommy’s attempt to chuckle at the anecdote—if it was even enough to be called an anecdote—was so unconvincing that it completely killed the conversation, and they all ate in silence until Curt, in the process of grabbing his third slice, glanced over at Arthur. “How’s the story coming?”

“Slowly, for the most part,” Arthur admitted. “I’m ‘aving trouble figuring the best way to tie the threads of the story together. The best order to present things in, what’s not important, what is important, and how important it is…it’s much more complicated than most of the stories I did for the _‘Erald_.”

“How are you writing a story if you don’t have a job anymore?” Tommy asked, squinting at Arthur in distrust. “Just who are you writing _about_?”

Arthur sighed. “Not you, if that’s your concern.” He shook his head. “It’s about the attack, the man who was responsible, and the appalling lack of media attention to his real motivations.”

“I think you’ll find no one wants to print a story like that. Not after the president himself has already weighed in on the shooter’s motives.”

“No matter what your friend President Reynolds has to say about it, the story has to be told—the people need to know the truth,” Arthur insisted. “And this is still a country with freedom of speech and a free press. It’ll be published, even if I ‘ave to travel a hundred miles to find an old letterpress machine and print it up myself.”

“I know a guy in New England with one,” Curt offered. “He uses it to print up advertising for concerts and shit.” And gay bars. And—back in the ‘60s—head shops. “He’d do it, no question.”

“Good to know.”

Tommy shrugged. “Despite what the news reports often say, I am not his friend. We’ve barely spoken more than a dozen words. The corporations underwriting my concert tours happen to be major contributors to his campaigns, and they’re always arranging…publicity events. It’s not my choosing.”

“You always ‘ave the choice to refuse.”

“Not when a contract’s been signed.”

“You can break a contract.”

“Not if you want to work in my industry,” Tommy insisted, laying his silverware down with such a loud clack that Curt wondered if he’d chipped the plate. “The music business has precious little to do with music at this level, and everything to do with money, marketing, politics and under-the-table business deals. If I didn’t cooperate, they could and would hire a _monkey_ to do my job, rather than letting me continue on.”

Curt laughed. “That suit’d look better on a monkey than it does on you.”

“That is not the issue.” Tommy sighed. “And, unfortunately, you’re not wrong.”

Curt laughed harder.

Tommy shook his head, picking up his silverware again. “You’re lucky that you’re not on the same tier of the industry that I am.”

“Was that a dig at my sales?”

“Not at all. It’s true your sales are lower than mine, but that’s because your label hasn’t got as many corporate sponsors, and the few it has got did not decide that you might make a good spokesman. Sales have very little to do with the music anymore. They’re all about media oversaturation, until the audience _thinks_ it likes your music, no matter that it’s rubbish.” He sighed sadly. “Because you’re not in this particular ring of Purgatory, you’re still allowed to make the music you want to make, and in the manner that you want to make it. I don’t have that freedom anymore, and couldn’t try to take it back even if I dared.”

Curt sighed. “They might be thinking of trying to send me down there,” he said. “The label’s been demanding that I be in the studio working on a new album by the end of the year.”

“How many songs do you have written?”

“Not one.” He had about half of one that he’d written about a year ago, but it was so awful he’d hadn’t bothered to finish it. It was hard to write decent songs when your life felt so full of shit.

“What are you going to do about that?”

“Probably piss off the label. Or piss _on_ it. Whatever seems to work at the time.” Curt shrugged. Labels were used to him being hard to deal with. That was why he wasn’t with the same label now that he started out with.

Tommy shook his head. “That would be a terrible waste of your resurgence in popularity.”

“It’s a pretty fucking horrible reason to get popular.”

“That’s no reason to waste it. Why don’t you just explain to the label that you won’t be healed enough to record so many new songs in time, and suggest that they finally put out a greatest hits album? It’s quite shocking that you don’t have one already, after all.”

“A greatest hits album…?” Curt repeated. He’d never really thought about it before. Those were for other people. People with records that actually kept selling years after the fact. His tended to just sit there taking up space.

“You didn’t watch the evening news last night, I suppose.”

“No, things were…” Curt glanced over at Arthur, who was guiltily staring down at the all-but-untouched slice of pizza on his plate. “Sorta busy, I guess you’d say.”

“I suppose it might not have told you much even if you had watched them, if you were watching the wrong channel.” Tommy shook his head. “There was a story on about how the shooting has affected record sales.”

“Yeah, I do have a manager, of course I know my sales have gone up,” Curt sighed. How clueless did he think Curt was?

“Not just that,” Tommy assured him. “Yours aren’t the only albums that are selling; every artist who’s gone on record as supporting you has seen some increase, particularly those who have been announced to be taking part in the benefit album, and the few artists who have gone on record as refusing to support you have seen a significant drop-off in sales.”

“Wow, really?” Arthur looked amazed. “I hadn’t read anything about that…”

“Americans show their support with their wallets. That’s why they pay money to wear advertisements on their clothing.”

Curt coughed into his pop can, feeling slightly ashamed of all the T-shirts in his closet with the logos of other people’s bands on them…

“What struck me, however,” Tommy continued, “was the segment about the used market.”

“Enh, who cares? We don’t get a cut of that.” It’d be nice if they did, but how the fuck could they enforce that?

“That’s precisely it,” Tommy insisted. “That’s why you need to release a greatest hits album. They interviewed a clerk at a music shop that sells both new and used records, and he explained that after the shooting—while you were still in hospital—they tripled the price on all your used albums, even more so on the early ones with your first label, given the years of legal wrangling over whether there can be new pressings of them under the conditions of your current contract. Even with that price increase, the albums still sold. Once they were sold out of the new ones, people bought the used ones. I’m sure your label would rather see some of that money for themselves, rather than watch all of it go to used stores.”

“Yeah, they sure would,” Curt agreed, then laughed. “Guess I know what I’m doing this afternoon.” He sighed. “Though it sounds like this is gonna make the old label even more unlikely to let go than they already were.”

“Money will have to change hands,” Tommy said, “as it always would have needed to. Only now your current label will view it as a very solid investment, rather than a risky one.”

Curt nodded. “Hey, uh, can you do me a favor?”

Tommy looked at him with surprise for a moment, then smiled softly. “Of course,” he replied, in Brian’s voice.

“Will you talk to Jerry? All the original master recordings from _Danger Zone_ are still with Bijou Music,” Curt reminded him. “The American label I had at the time was just sent a copy. My current label’s gonna want the originals.”

Tommy frowned. “It might be better if your manager spoke to him. He’s unlikely to cooperate with me. The last I heard from him, he—well, let us leave it at saying that he holds an inappropriate grudge.”

Curt sighed. He wasn’t entirely sure it _was_ inappropriate. No matter what Brian had wanted to do with that stupid stunt, it had really wrecked up Jerry’s business. Surely Jerry had a right to be bitter about it. “Maybe Shannon could ask him?” Jerry had really had the hots for her, not that Curt could figure out _why_ …

“Given her close association with me, that would be just as bad as if I spoke to him myself. You really will be better off having your manager speak to him.”

“Thing is, though, Phil doesn’t know your secret,” Curt said. “And there’s no fucking way Jerry hasn’t figured it out.”

Tommy hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t know what to do about Jerry. I’ve never known what to do about him. He was fantastic when what he wanted coincided with what I wanted. But when it conflicted…” A bitter laugh. “You know, Shannon once suggested that we hire an assassin and have him killed.”

“She was joking, right?” Didn’t she used to fuck him?

“I certainly hope so, but I didn’t dare ask.”

That unsettling comment finally killed the conversation, and no one spoke again until they were done eating. While Arthur was cleaning up (he was really living up to that servant title he refused to take), Curt walked Tommy to the door. “You never did say anything about how you feel,” Tommy said, stopping Curt from opening the door.

Curt sighed, looking away. “What do you want me to say, man?”

“I just want to know. The truth.” A hand was lightly set on Curt’s shoulder, just beside his neck.

“I…you know I’ll always love who you were. You don’t have to ask that.” Curt shook his head, removing Tommy’s hand from his shoulder. “But I’m not sure I even know who you are now.” He’d certainly been giving mixed signals all day on that subject.

“Neither am I, most days.” Tommy leaned in and gave Curt a light peck on the cheek, then left without another word.

Fuck, what a way to start the afternoon…


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'm trying a work-around since my old version of Word is so old that this version of Windows won't run it. :( (The plus side of doing my writing on a laptop that has never once touched the internet is that it doesn't suffer all the harms caused by the internet and has thus been with me for like 15 years. The minus side is that its software is increasingly incompatible with what I have on my internet laptop. But since this one is on its last legs, as far as I can tell, it didn't seem to make sense to buy a new copy of Word for this computer. Makes more sense to wait until I have to get a new one and get it on that...) Anyway, there may be some inconsistencies in the way the copy-paste works, but at least it seems to be keeping the line indents, which didn't work with Open Office's word processor...though the line indents are way smaller than they were from Word. Hopefully it hasn't introduced any problems to the text (missing accented letters, missing italics, that kind of thing) and will work out decently well...though I sure as heck miss the ability to use my bookmarks to go straight to the chapter I want!

Arthur had only barely managed to organise his notes before going to bed last night, and even then only by staying up rather later than usual, with the unfortunate result that Curt had gone to bed at least an hour before he did. Consequently, he had decided to sleep in “his” room, the one where his computer and all his things were. By the time he awoke the next morning, he could smell burnt toast all the way in his room.

When Arthur entered the kitchen, he found Curt sitting at the table, awkwardly slathering butter on his singed toast. “Do you want me to help with that?” Arthur asked.

“Where the _fuck_ were you last night?” Curt asked, pointing the dripping butter knife at him. “Do you know how freaky it was, waking up alone in this state?”

“I—I’m sorry,” Arthur stammered, taken aback by such an accusatory tone so early in the morning. “I just…didn’t want to wake you.”

Curt grunted at him, and returned his attention to his toast. Unsure what else to do, and unable to think of anything else to say, Arthur set about fixing his own breakfast, starting with a pot of tea. When he finally sat down, Arthur found that Curt was staring at him, with a cold sort of malice.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Arthur insisted. “You’d been asleep for some time, and I thought it would wake you if I came in, that’s all.” Such a stupid thing to be upset about! Especially when he only wanted Arthur there as company, not as a lover. Why didn’t he just get a dog, if he was afraid to be alone? At least he might actually _like_ the dog.

“Don’t do it again. If you’re gonna sleep in my apartment, you’re gonna do it in my bed.”

“All right.” Arthur tried to dismiss the entire conversation as he drank his tea. It was just Curt’s nerves acting up, he told himself. He was still distraught by the attack. He was unbalanced because of Tommy/Brian’s visit yesterday.

But no…that couldn’t be it, could it? They’d been positively chummy. If whatever was happening this morning was because of Tommy’s visit, it was because Tommy had been poisoning Curt against him. Well, of course he had. How could he not have? Arthur knew his secret, and had made it very clear that he was willing to use it as a weapon against him if need be. Of course Tommy wanted to see Arthur removed from this comfortable life and sent out to wander homeless in the streets. And yet, wasn’t that counter to his best interests? The more destitute Arthur became, the more likely he was to risk the dangers of selling that story to the highest bidder. And there had to be plenty of music monthlies out there who would bid quite a lot on the story of how Brian Slade sold out and became Tommy Stone.

No, the simplest explanation, the only one that fit all the facts, was that the longer they spent together, the more Curt was realising that he just didn’t like Arthur, and he was finding any and every excuse to lash out because of that. Sadly, a very common situation; it seemed like everyone Arthur got close to sooner or later decided they actually hated him. Of course they did. Even his own _family_ hated him. Why would anyone else be any different?

Well, at least Curt would be able to be rid of him soon. Once his arm was out of that cast, he’d have no more need of Arthur, and could send him away without a second thought. But at least Arthur would have done _some_ good: he had managed to bring Curt and Brian back together, even if not romantically.

Curt glanced over at the clock on the wall. “Soon as you’re done eating, I need you to help me get dressed. And looking nice.”

“Because of your follow-up appointment? It’s not until this afternoon.” And hardly required him to look nice!

But Curt shook his head. “Phil rescheduled it for first thing this morning. I’m gonna be meeting with suits from my old label all day.”

“Oh, about the rights,” Arthur murmured, nodding. “Of course. I can help you get ready now, if you don’t want to wait.”

“Nah, I got time.”

Arthur would have preferred it if Curt _hadn’t_ had time. As it was, Curt just sat there, stone-faced, watching him eat. Not a very relaxing way to eat a meal! He was little more than a bundle of nerves by the time he finally finished and could escort Curt back into his own bedroom and help him get ready to leave the flat with Phil. Given the meeting with the record label, Arthur was careful to select the very nicest of the shirts Gary had prepared for Curt. (Thankfully, it was clean!) He put extra care into brushing Curt’s hair, and started to pull it back into a ponytail for him, but Curt wouldn’t let him.

“The suits from the label won’t recognise me if I’ve got my hair up,” Curt insisted. “Bad enough I gotta go in looking like a normal person; they’d be happier if I showed up wearing leathers, even in this heat.” He laughed. “Given which label it is, they’re probably gonna be expecting me to still wear nail polish and eyeliner.”

“I’m sure they realise you don’t dress that way anymore, particularly not off the stage.”

“Suits don’t think like normal people,” Curt insisted. “They go to special schools that train the intellect right outta ‘em. That’s why they do such dumb shit.”

Part of Arthur felt like he ought to argue with that. And the rest of him was all too aware of some of the idiocy he’d had to cover for the _Herald_ , the things CEOs thought they could get away with, the things they somehow believed weren’t illegal, or at least weren’t illegal for people as rich as they were.

Once Curt was ready to go, he went to watch television—though there can’t have been anything remotely interesting on—while he waited for Phil to get there to pick him up. Seeing no other way to make himself useful, and no way at all to make up for his unwitting (and evidently unforgivable) gaffe last night, Arthur fetched another cup of tea and went back into the bedroom to turn on his computer and start writing.

The story was so difficult and absorbing to write that he wasn’t even aware of Curt leaving the flat, let alone anything else. By the time Curt came into the room, Arthur had only stopped once to use the loo and fetch some more tea.

“Still at it, huh?” Curt asked, sitting down on the unmade bed.

“You’re back already?” Arthur turned to look at him in surprise. “What happened to your meeting with the label?”

“It’s over, of course.”

“That was awfully fast. Didn’t it go well?”

Curt looked at the alarm clock by the bed. “For fuck’s sake, it’s after five! How long were you expecting the meeting to last?!”

“It is?” Arthur checked the clock himself. It really did read 5:28. How was that possible? “I…?”

Curt sighed. “You haven’t moved from that chair since lunch, have you?”

“Er…not…precisely…”

“You _did_ at least eat lunch.” It should have been a question, but it really wasn’t.

“I thought I’d ‘ave some when I hit a good stopping point…” Or he hadn’t really noticed it reaching lunchtime…

“And _you_ were getting on _my_ case for unhealthy eating habits?” Curt shook his head. “Do you always get this caught up in what you’re writing?”

“Not normally, no.” Arthur sat down again, and saved his work. “Normally, it would never take me this long to write a first draft.”

“Shit, you’re still on the first draft?”

“It’s very complicated. And much longer than my usual stories.”

“You’re just gonna hafta finish it tomorrow,” Curt said, getting up again. “Where do you want to go for dinner?”

“I’d really like to finish this tonight…”

“No fucking way. Now turn it off, or I’m unplugging it.”

Arthur sighed, and obediently saved his work, then shut off the computer. The last thing he wanted was to have Curt start causing damage to the machine. “All right, it’s off.”

“Good, now get cleaned up, and we’ll go out somewhere for dinner.”

Not seeing any choice, Arthur took a brief shower, shaved, and put on one of his nicer shirts, uncomfortably aware of Curt watching his every move. Curt made a disapproving face when Arthur picked one of his own shirts to wear, but didn’t say anything about it. He didn’t say anything at all, in fact, until they had left the bedroom and walked all the way to the dining room.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to go see a play if you decided to wear _that_ ,” he commented.

“Curt, I need to finish the article as soon as possible. I ‘ave to keep writing after we eat.”

“You’re just gonna leave me alone again?”

“Every minute we delay, the story gets older, and more people lose interest,” Arthur pointed out. “I’ll spend as much time with you as you want after I’ve written it, but—”

“You’re gonna burn out if you work that hard. Give your brain time to unwind.”

“But—”

“You’re relaxing tonight. Period.” Curt’s tone (and words) left no room for argument.

Arthur sighed in resignation. “All right. What do you want to do?”

“We’ll start with dinner,” Curt informed him. “Then we’ll go catch a flick, or maybe just go clubbing.”

“I’d rather not go clubbing,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “I can’t afford to risk bein’ hung over tomorrow morning. Besides, you’re not supposed to ‘ave alcohol until you’re off those medications.”

Curt grinned as they left the flat. “Good thing I can stop taking them.”

“Oh, was the prognosis good?”

“Yeah. He said I’d probably be able to lose the cast in a week or two.”

“That’s fantastic!” Arthur smiled despite his inward pain. He hadn’t expected he would need to find a new place to live quite so soon…

“I’ll still have to keep it in a sling most of the time for the first few weeks after the cast comes off, but at least I should be able to dress myself.”

“That’s…that’s wonderful.” Hopefully the choking sensation in his throat wasn’t audible in his voice…

“You don’t sound too happy,” Curt said, drawing Arthur in close against his side with an arm around his waist. “Don’t you want me to get better?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“There isn’t one,” Arthur insisted, as they stepped into the lift. “But how did the meeting with the label go?” he asked, desperate to change the subject.

“About what I was expecting. The reps from the two labels spent all afternoon duking it out over how much the new label was gonna hafta shell out to buy the rights and the master recording tapes from all my old albums.” Curt shook his head. “There was literally no reason for me to be there; I didn’t say a goddamn word. Fuck, even Phil barely said anything!”

“I’m assumin’ you don’t mean they were literally ‘aving fistfights over the music.”

Curt laughed. “I wish they had been! That at least would have been interesting!”

“So…ah…what did _you_ spend the afternoon doing, then, if they weren’t lettin’ you take part in the conversation?” Arthur could just picture Curt sitting in a board room, falling asleep…

“Thinking, mostly.” Curt sighed. “I, um, look, I’m sorry about this morning. I was…that wasn’t cool. I’m not…I mean…you know I’ve been having a rough time lately…”

“Of course I do,” Arthur assured him, pressing closer against his side. “I wasn’t offended.” Not entirely true, but not entirely a lie, since he’d been more frightened and confused than offended.

“Well, anyway, I still want to take you on a nice date to make up for it.”

“That sounds lovely,” Arthur said, even as he inwardly reproached Curt for not simply _saying_ so in the first place, instead of growling orders at him. “Did you ‘ave anything in mind?”

“I thought of a lot of things, but most of ‘em require you be dressed nicer than that.”

Arthur bit his lip, watching the numbers lighting up as the lift travelled down towards the ground floor. “Did you want me to go back up and change?”

“Nah, it’s okay. We’ll just do something low key. Better recovery time afterwards, right?” Curt grinned at him even as he let go of Arthur’s waist as the lift arrived at its destination. “What do you want to eat?”

“I’m fine with almost anything, really.”

Curt nodded, stepping out of the lift. “How about Italian? No, scratch that—too much garlic.”

Arthur winced, and wondered if he should once again reiterate that he hadn’t been the one to order that meal.

“Oh, I’ve got it! You like steak?”

“Sure.” Not that he had been able to afford to eat it on the salary the _Herald_ had paid him…

“Right, that’s where we’ll go, then.” Curt smiled, leading him towards the door. “Best steak in town. The place prides itself on having every kind of beef imaginable.”

“Every kind of beef dish, you mean?” That would make for an absurdly large menu…

“No, it’s almost all steak. But the actual beef, where the cows were raised and how they were raised, they’ve got every choice you can imagine, and then some. You know they even import Kobe beef from Japan?”

“Is that good?” Arthur had less than no knowledge of Japanese beef.

“Yeah, it’s fucking awesome. Not worth what they charge for it, though. They charge about twice what it costs in Tokyo, and it already cost a fucking arm and a leg _there_.” Curt shook his head. “It’s worth ordering if you’re in Japan—especially if you’re actually in Kobe, ‘cause I bet it’s a lot cheaper there than in Tokyo—but not in New York. Still, there’s plenty of American beef to choose from. Fuck, they’ll even tell you the names of the ranches where the cows were raised, in case that matters to you.”

“Why would that ever matter?”

Curt shrugged. “Beats the shit outta me. I guess if you’re an investor in a ranch, or you know someone who owns one? Doesn’t matter. They get all the best cuts, and they know all the best ways to prepare it.”

“If it’s such a—are you sure I’m dressed for it?”

“No, but they’ve got private rooms. Don’t worry, we’re good,” Curt assured him, with a grin. “I know the owner.”

Curt continued to regale Arthur with tales of beefy grandeur for the entire taxi ride to the restaurant, punctuated with the occasional mention of other famous people who frequented the establishment. (Most of whom were now dead and/or didn’t actually _live_ in New York, so the knowledge was rather useless.) For a toney restaurant, it didn’t look like much on the outside or the inside, and yet the other clientele were all dressed far nicer than Arthur, or even Curt. The man at the door was giving them a shifty-eyed stare until he recognised Curt, at which time he suddenly became far more friendly, especially after Curt specified that he wanted a private dining room.

The private dining room was about the size of Arthur’s parents’ dining room, with a table about the same size, too. However, where sideboards, china cabinets and an unattractive radiator had filled the rest of the room in the Stuart household in Manchester, this room had nothing else taking up the dimly lit space, aside from the artful braziers in each corner that didn’t really shed enough light for the room. The only other light in the room came from candles, leaving Arthur afraid he wouldn’t be able to read his menu in the slightest.

Reading the menu was rather pointless, as it turned out. As Curt had said, they had very few actual dishes to choose from, but had a list reminiscent of a wine list to inform them of all the different types of beef available. It was all a little overwhelming, and by the time the waiter came around to take their orders, Arthur still had no idea what he should order.

Therefore, he asked “What would you recommend?” instead of fumbling about to try to order something on his own. Most waiters usually had a few prepared answers to that question…

“That depends on your taste, sir. Do you prefer your steak moist, tender, juicy, flavourful, inte—”

“I’ve almost never even had steak,” Arthur interrupted him. “I couldn’t afford it after I left home, and my mum’s steak was…well…boiled.” He shook his head.

“You will not find any boiled steaks here.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Arthur replied. Eating his mother’s steak had convinced him that steak was a thoroughly disgusting food. Then he’d had a bit of real steak at one of the parties Gary took him to in New York, and learned that it didn’t have to be so vile.

“So, you wanna ease into eating good steak, or dive right into the deep end?” Curt asked, with a bit of a grin.

“I…don’t know…?” Food was not, in truth, all that important to Arthur…

“If you want to ease into the good stuff, get a classic New York strip,” Curt said. “And if you want the _really_ good stuff, you gotta go for a filet mignon.” Then he looked at the waiter. “Which kinds of beef are good today?”

“Sir, I—”

“C’mon, we both know there’s good days and bad days, even from the same ranch.”

The waiter smiled uncomfortably. “Well…the customers have been quite vocal in their praise of the Iowa beef we’ve been serving today. And we’ve just started serving bison. That’s been quite popular as well.”

“Bison?” Arthur repeated, agog. “Is that legal?” Weren’t buffalo an endangered species or something?

“Of course it’s legal. These bison were raised on a farm in Missouri,” the waiter assured him.

“I’ve never had bison,” Curt commented. “What’s it like?”

“Though the texture is a bit less fine, the taste has sweet overtones, or so I’m told. I haven’t had the pleasure yet, myself.”

Curt nodded. “Sounds interesting. I’ll have the bison. As to how to prepare it…uh…surprise me. Whatever suits the flavour best.”

“Very good, sir. And to drink?”

Curt frowned. “The medicine’s not quite outta my system, so I guess I’m not allowed alcohol until tomorrow. So…uh…fuck. I dunno. Just water, I guess. I don’t think pop would go very well with steak.”

The waiter nodded, looking pained. “And for the other gentleman?”

“Um…I…uh…”

“Go ahead and bring him a New York strip of the Iowa beef,” Curt said. “If he goes straight from boiled to filet mignon, all the good stuff below filet mignon will be ruined for him.”

The waiter glanced over at Arthur, as if needing confirmation. Arthur nodded at him. “And to drink?”

“I’ll just ‘ave water as well,” Arthur said. Having a glass of wine with the meal would do nothing to hamper his mental processes the following morning, but it would be rather cruel to Curt, since he couldn’t have any.

It wasn’t until after the waiter left that Curt started talking about his plans for the rest of their date. He was vacillating between going to see a regular movie and finding a theatre showing gay porn. Arthur ruled the latter out quite firmly. If there was any place in this city that presented the highest probability of getting attacked by an homophobic mob, it was outside just such a theatre.

“But why tonight?” Arthur asked. “Why not wait until tomorrow night, when you’d be free to drink, and I’d hopefully be done with the first draft of the article—maybe even ‘ave sent it in to the editorial office to get their feedback on it?”

Curt laughed uncomfortably. “That’s ‘cause of the assholes from the label.”

“The old label, or your current one?”

“The current one. They want me to break up with you and go on record claiming to be bisexual instead of gay.” Curt grimaced. “Just when I’d finally stopped lying about it!”

“So…what…uh…?”

“Oh, I told ‘em I’d only do it if they had five of their other stars hold press conferences insisting that they weren’t straight,” Curt laughed.

“Which other stars?”

“Any of ‘em. I mean, there’s definitely more than five other singers on that label who aren’t straight, but I didn’t really mean them. Fuck, for my point, that wouldn’t even work. I meant straight ones, you know? If they’re gonna make me lie, they gotta make someone else lie, too. Only fair.”

Arthur chuckled. “Somehow, I doubt they saw it that way.”

“Yeah, they didn’t. But I don’t give a shit about them. If they’d said that _before_ the meeting, I’d probably have suggested going back to the old label, and have the old label buy the right to print up my _new_ music instead, but…after all that shit, I guess I better not. They did fork out a lot of money to get my old songs. And they did agree to put out a greatest hits album, so…” Curt shrugged.

“What about the master recordings from _Danger Zone_?” Arthur asked. “It’s your best solo album by far.” His truly best album, of course, was the one he had done with Jack Fairy, but that was also his first album on the new label…

“Phil called Jerry first thing this morning—like five in the morning first thing. Sounds like Jerry’s trying to hold us over a barrel, but he’ll come around if the label gives him enough money. There’s nothing that speaks to Jerry like money.” That certainly fit what Mandy had had to say about him.

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence, as Arthur realised he had nothing else to ask about, and Curt seemed content to just sit there waiting for his steak. Maybe it was for the best that Curt would be kicking him out in a few weeks. Then Curt would be free to go looking for a man he was actually interested in—maybe even go back to Brian after all—and Arthur…well, maybe if the article was really good, Mr. Nathan would advance him enough money to rent another cheap flat somewhere. If not, he’d have to see if he could find a friend willing to put him up until he could save enough money to get a new flat. Gary still lived with his parents; maybe one of his siblings had moved out, and Arthur could borrow the empty bedroom.

“You really sure you wanna see a regular movie?” Curt suddenly asked.

“It seems wiser than seeking out pornography. Unless you want to give the tabloids room to claim that your sex life with your live-in is less than stellar.” No matter what Curt was saying, Arthur didn’t have the utter gall to call himself Curt’s boyfriend. Not when the only time he’d managed to arouse Curt was nearly ten years ago.

Curt coughed slightly. “They say there’s no such thing as bad press, but that sounds pretty fucking bad, all right.” He grinned. “We could always skip the movie and just go back to the apartment.”

“Yes, that’s true…” …though it hardly seemed a grin-worthy proposition. It rather sounded, in fact, like giving up on the pretence at romance.

“You want to?”

“I…if you want to.” Arthur, after all, hadn’t wanted to go on this pretend date in the first place. He’d wanted to keep working. If they went straight back to the flat after dinner, and Curt went to watch telly or read or whatever else he normally did to amuse himself, Arthur could get back to writing the article, and if he worked all night, he could send it off to the _Weekly News_ editor’s desk first thing tomorrow morning…

“I already know what _I_ want,” Curt said, strangely getting up out of his chair. “I wanna know what _you_ want.”

“Curt, I don’t understand what—” Arthur stopped as he felt Curt pulling his chair away from the table with such a rough, jerking motion that the chair nearly tipped over. “What are you doing?!”

Instead of answering, Curt sat down, straddling Arthur, and started kissing him. It took at least thirty seconds for anything to filter past all the confusion filling Arthur’s brain, but once it did, he responded passionately. No matter what Curt had in mind with this bizarre stunt (was the door open? (could people see them?)), Arthur couldn’t resist the opportunity to act on his desires when it was presented to him so intensely. He wrapped his arms around Curt, one hand sliding up to tangle in Curt’s long, loose hair, and the other resting on the small of his back.

Curt’s good arm started out more on the back of the chair than on Arthur, but had travelled up to Arthur’s head even before Arthur got over his confusion. After a while—well after Arthur started giving the kiss everything he had—Curt’s hand was withdrawn from Arthur, only to return, pressed up against his chest, slipping downwards until it was caressing Arthur through his trousers and provoking an instant response.

Things might have become quite interesting if they hadn’t been distracted by the sound of shattering glass. “Oh—I’m—I’m terribly sorry to interrupt!” It was the waiter’s voice.

As Curt got back to his feet, Arthur glanced over his shoulder and saw that the door to the private room was now open, and the waiter was scrambling to pick up a tray and the remains of glasses and a pitcher. He must have been bringing in their drinks…

“Guess this place is a bit too square,” Curt commented as he sauntered back over to his side of the table and sat down again. Unlike Arthur, he didn’t appear to be even the least bit aroused.

Of course not.

Because it had only been a game of make-believe for him, hadn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really shouldn't have sent them to a steak house on their date. I know nothing about steak. I don't even like beef. (And given how ecologically damaging it is to raise cows, I'm quite glad of that fact!) So if there was anything really bizarrely wrong in the discussion with the waiter, please forgive me for my ignorance. And also let me know about it so I can fix it. ;)


	16. Chapter 16

Saturday morning was a grim one for Arthur. Despite every pretence Curt had put on last night—the dinner, the bizarre make-out session at the restaurant when he had known perfectly well their drinks would be delivered very soon, the hour or so spent cuddling nude in the hot tub—of course nothing had ended up happening. They hadn’t even pretended they were going to make love when they went to bed. Arthur awoke depressed and miserable, after constant nightmares about being thrown out onto the street.

Worse still, after breakfast, he had called the  _ Weekly News _ office to see what their hours were and when he could turn in the article, only to be told that the editor was never in the office on weekends, and that anything he turned in wouldn’t be seen until Monday morning, meaning another full week before the story could hit the newsstands. Maybe that was why Nathan was willing to risk a story like this one: he had realised that it would take so long to be printed that the country as a whole would have already forgotten all about the attack. If no one read the article, it couldn’t create any kind of a stir.

The only thing he could do, of course, was soldier on. He had to make this article so perfect that…no, no matter how perfect it was, it would never have any impact. No one would bother reading it, because they would think it was “old news” and thus it couldn’t do any good, couldn’t change the public’s mind, couldn’t influence lawmakers to fix any of the problems with the system. The best Arthur could hope for, realistically, was that other news organisations might read it and be willing to give him a job when Nathan tired of paying him a salary as a charity case. But, of course, since he had been idiot enough to confess in print that he was gay, that wasn’t likely to happen, either; no normal news organisation would hire a gay man.

So, really, the only thing Arthur could do was make the article perfect to please himself, to placate himself that he could still write, that he was not useless and worthless the way everyone around him thought he was. No one had ever thought he had any real value: why else would Lou have assigned the Brian Slade story to him, except in the certain knowledge that there was no way he could find anything, and that he’d end up just writing a trite retrospective on Brian’s shooting star of a career? If Arthur had held any value to the  _ Herald _ , they wouldn’t have printed his confession; Lou would have edited out any mentions of Arthur’s sexuality, and the part about quitting his job, too. The fact that the article was printed intact was proof of how little he had meant to the paper, and how little Lou cared about what happened to Arthur as a person, since no one in the age of AIDS wanted to hire a gay man.

Getting the article perfect really wasn’t  _ just _ for Arthur’s own mental satisfaction, then, was it? It was a way of getting revenge on everyone who had written him off as “just another worthless fruit.” No matter how little impact the article had on the world at large, after Arthur’s bizarre printed confession the whole New York press club would be sure to read anything he wrote for at least six months, maybe a year to come, so they would all read it, and if he got it perfect, not only scooped them all but also wrote a stellar article about it…well, at least they’d all feel like rubbish for having dismissed his potential so lightly!

Thus, Arthur was so focused on his work that he didn’t even notice Curt entering the room until he spoke. “How’s it going?”

Arthur might have jumped slightly. “Ah! I—! Uh…fine.”

Curt laughed. “You need to relax, man.”

“I’ll relax after I’m done writing this.”

“Lemme get you a beer or something, at least.”

“I’m not ‘aving a beer while I’m working. After, yeah, I could use it, but not now.”

Curt grinned at him. “Okay, it’s a promise.”

“Er…okay?” Arthur hadn’t exactly meant it as any kind of promise, but…he could desperately do with getting pissed, so it was likely to happen whether he made any promises or not.

Arthur returned to his work, expecting to hear Curt walking out of the room. Instead, he heard the springs of the bed creak as Curt stretched out on it. What…? Why would he…? Arthur thought of dozens of very basic questions, but decided not to ask of them; he didn’t need the distraction.

When the doorbell rang, Arthur glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the room. He could just see the alarm clock on the bed; it was nearly eleven in the morning. Curt was stretched out on the bed still and looked like he’d been napping, but he was clearly awake now. “I’ll get it,” he said, slowly getting himself up. “You keep on working.”

Arthur hardly needed to be told twice, but became thoroughly distracted when he heard Curt shouting something, and the front door of the flat slammed shut. Curt returned to the bedroom about a minute later, with a beer in his hand. “Who was it?” Arthur asked, wondering if it had been someone from a tabloid, looking for a story about what had happened last night at the steak house.

“Shannon,” Curt said, sitting down and putting his can of beer between his knees so he could open it. “She’s brought something else she wants you to sign. I told her you’re not signing shit.”

Arthur grimaced. “That’s not—she’ll not go away with that.” Or if she  _ did _ go away, it might actually be worse. “I’ll go ‘ave a word with her.”

He rose, and hurried through the flat towards the front door. If Shannon gave up and left, reporting back to her master that Arthur hadn’t signed the non-disclosure agreement, then they’d report everything their detective had found, and Arthur would be in prison by the time his article appeared in print! By the time he got to the front door of the flat, Shannon was already waiting for the lift.

She glanced over her shoulder at him as Arthur approached her. “Changed your mind, have you?” she asked snidely.

“Curt doesn’t speak for me,” Arthur said. “I told you both that I’d sign it; I meant it then, and I ‘aven’t stopped meanin’ it since.”

Shannon turned away from the lift again, and held out a legal-sized manila envelope towards him. “You’ll sign it right now, then.”

“Of course.” Arthur took the document out of the envelope, and reviewed its contents. It was a very standard non-disclosure agreement, promising not to publish anything about Brian Slade, Tommy Stone, or Shannon Hazelbourne. Arthur frowned. “Can I make one amendment to this?” he asked.

“What would that be?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

“Let me put a date on the Brian Slade part,” Arthur said. “Just change it so it reads that I won’t publish anything about Brian after 1977. Or at least 1975. There’s no possible harm to your employer if I write about any events up to his arrest for cocaine possession in 1977.”

Shannon frowned. “My employer does not want the world reminded of that. You may write about anything up to 1974.”

“1975,” Arthur insisted. “At least to February. I saw him when he was watchin’ Curt perform backstage at the Death of Glitter concert. It’s my own personal memory—one of the only two times I saw Brian Slade in person. It’s not fair of you to demand I can’t tell the world about it if I so choose. It doesn’t reflect on your employer in any way.”

She sighed. “Very well, you may add the words ‘after 1975’ to the section on Brian Slade.” She still sounded reluctant, but Arthur didn’t let that stop him. He accepted the pen she offered, made the slight change, then signed the document. “Thank you,” Shannon said, as she accepted the document back. “I’ll notarise it as soon as I get back to my office, and file it accordingly. You do understand the risks to yourself if you violate this agreement, I assume.”

“Yes, I understand.” He didn’t like any part of it, but what else could he do?

Shannon smiled with an artificial sweetness. “I  _ do _ hope this hasn’t completely destroyed that article you’re working on.”

Arthur sighed deeply. “As I told your employer, it has literally nothing to do with him; there isn’t a single mention anywhere in the article. It’s about the man who shot Curt, and making sure the world knows the truth about why he did it, in the hopes that he can face justice.”

“I don’t believe my employer considers that nothing to do with him.”

“I can’t help it if he’s got a swollen ego, but he needs to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around him.” That was his problem back when he was still Brian, too.

“What would you know about—” Shannon started, but stopped immediately as the door to the flat opened again.

“What the fuck is taking so long, Arthur?” Curt asked. “Just tell her to go fuck herself.”

“I’m not in the habit of saying that to anyone,” Arthur sighed, “and especially not to people who are simply doing their job. However, I believe Miss Hazelbourne was just leaving.”

Shannon smiled tightly, and aimed a wicked look at Curt. “I’ve gotten when I came for, so yes, I believe I was.” She turned, pressed the button for the lift (which had been sitting there waiting for some time) and the doors were shutting behind her again before Curt could even start yelling at her.

“You didn’t actually sign it, did you?” Curt asked, looking at Arthur suspiciously.

“I had to,” Arthur sighed. “They’re rather blackmailing me.”

“Blackmail?” Curt repeated, following as Arthur went back inside the flat. “Seriously?”

“Maybe that’s not quite the right word.” Arthur shrugged. “They have proof on a number of petty crimes I’ve committed in the course of my journalistic career, and they were going to turn me over to the police if I refused to sign.” Some of them weren’t actually that petty, even. They’d felt justified—they still felt justified—but there had been some data theft as well as breaking and entering. No matter that no one noticed—in most cases, he’d gone back the next day and replaced the folders he’d stolen—but it was still highly illegal. Even if the ‘victims’ were themselves in prison now.

“That’s not right.”

“Don’t worry about it, Curt. It was only a non-disclosure agreement, promisin’ I wouldn’t reveal Tommy’s secret.” Arthur shook his head. “I wouldn’t anyway. It’d only be punishing Brian’s fans further than they already ‘ave been.”

“So it wasn’t them trying that pre-nup shit again?”

Arthur smiled uncomfortably, and shook his head. It felt rather wrong not to admit that he’d signed that to begin with, and yet…he couldn’t bring himself to cause a row by admitting it. After all, he needed to focus on finishing the article, not on defending his past actions to the very man who everyone was trying to protect. What Curt didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Not in this case, anyway.

Despite the distraction, Arthur managed to finish the first draft by mid-afternoon. Curt immediately insisted that they have a drink in the hot tub to celebrate. Why he kept being so eager to soak in the hot tub when it required tying an awkward plastic bag around his cast, Arthur would never understand. “So, you’re free to do whatever you want now, right?” Curt asked, once they were in the water. 

“No, not entirely,” Arthur said. “Since the editor won’t be in the office to see the article until Monday, I want to go over the first draft and fix up the worst mistakes before I take it in to him. I thought I could do that tonight, and then take it by tomorrow—”

“No fucking way,” Curt said, putting his good arm around Arthur’s shoulders. “You need the rest of the day off. Edit tomorrow, and take it in first thing Monday morning. If you put it in his hands directly, then you know no one’s gonna lose it overnight, right?”

Arthur stared at him for a split second, then nodded. “Shite, I hadn’t even thought of that. Reynolds’ censors might ‘ave a mole in the  _ Weekly News _ office who’d keep the editor from ever seein’ a story like that if it comes in when he’s not around…”

“So you’re good with just relaxing tonight, right?”

Arthur nodded. “Yes, I think I need it.”

Curt was extremely enthusiastic about that response, and insisted that they call out to have a very nice dinner delivered after they spent an hour or so just soaking in the warm, bubbling water. Of course, after dinner, Curt once again insisted that they sit down in front of the television to watch a pornographic movie. Arthur was, by this point, getting to be quite impressed by how many video tapes Curt had of gay porn. He hadn’t entirely been aware that so much of it even  _ existed _ , let alone that it was available on video cassette. Even if most of the tapes appeared to be highly bootleg ones…and some of the ones that they hadn’t watched were labelled in such a way that Arthur rather suspected they were home movies of Curt with some of his former boyfriends. He wasn’t entirely sure if he desperately wanted to watch something like that or if the very idea was making him rather uncomfortably jealous.

The porn was a bit better than usual (possibly because Arthur couldn’t understand a word of the dialog, as it was in a language he didn’t speak), and yet Curt didn’t seem to have even the slightest hint of an erection as they headed into the bedroom.

Sure enough, as they kissed and stripped each other, Curt was entirely flaccid. If he was so picky that even good pornography wasn’t enough for him, of course Arthur was utterly failing to arouse him! The question was, why did he keep bothering to try? Why keep on pretending that maybe kissing long enough would somehow make Arthur good enough for him?

They kept kissing until Arthur had gone far past the point where he felt as though he might burst if they didn’t start doing  _ something _ more than just kissing. Even if that meant that Curt gave up and went to bed while Arthur went into the loo and had a quick wank—it’d be better than continuing to extend this on into the realm of torture!

When Arthur had finally hit the point where even he couldn’t just take it without doing something, he gently pulled out of the embrace. Before he could speak, Curt looked down at Arthur’s throbbing erection, and smiled weakly. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said, trying to maintain his smile. “I thought I—I don’t—it’s not…it’s not your fault.” Curt shook his head. “It’s just—I’m just broken.”

“It’s all right,” Arthur said, trying to step away so he could go into the loo before things got worse.

“No, it’s not! You have no idea how much I hate this! I want to fuck you so bad it hurts, and I  _ can’t _ .” He swallowed heavily in the silence while Arthur was trying to figure out what—if anything—he could say in response. “But you can.”

“What?”

Curt grinned, although it wasn’t entirely convincing. “You’re gonna have to do the fucking, that’s all.”

Even as Arthur’s heart started pounding even more furiously than it already had been, his mind overflowed with doubts. “But…I’m not good enough to—you don’t want me to—you deserve better.”

Curt looked at him sceptically, then glanced down at his erection. “You really saying you don’t know how to use that properly?”

“Of course not!” None of the men who’d let him inside had ever complained about his performance. None of them had ever particularly praised it, either, but they weren’t any of them the type to keep silent about it if they had a partner who lacked the basic skills.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Well…but…I mean…you’re—you’re a star, you’re somebody, and I’m…nobody…”

“No one as pretty as you are could ever be ‘nobody.’ In fact, you’re a lot less ‘nobody’ than a lot of the guys who’ve fucked me before,” Curt insisted.

“I can’t imagine that…”

“Don’t even try. Just imagine  _ yourself _ fucking me. And then do it.”

“You…you really want me to…?” Arthur still couldn’t wrap his head around the idea; it was too good to be true.

“C’mon, baby, I’m practically  _ begging _ you to do it!”

Whether it was the mild irritation in Curt’s voice or the desperation in his eyes, something broke through Arthur’s worries, shattering them. He laughed more genuinely than he had in weeks. “That’s true,” he agreed, leaning in for another kiss to cover the gap while he wondered where Curt kept the condoms and lubricant…

***

It had been a  _ long _ time since he’d woken up as the front spoon. Curt wasn’t sure he could even remember the last time it had happened. Brian had never wanted to be the back spoon, even after he’d topped; he had always made some excuse, usually about choking on Curt’s hair. Which was actually a pretty reasonable excuse. But Arthur was a little taller than Curt (or Brian, for that matter), and he was breathing peacefully, so he must not have been having any trouble from Curt’s hair.

It hadn’t been the greatest sex of Curt’s life by a long shot—it hadn’t come close to matching up to what little Curt could remember of fucking Arthur back on that rooftop nine years ago—but it had seemed better than it was because it had just been such a fucking long time since Curt had had any sex at all. He was still worried about the fact that he hadn’t been able to get it up until he had a cock in his ass, but at least it had  _ eventually _ worked. So he wasn’t completely dead down there, but…whatever was wrong, it was worse than it had been during most of the years he had spent addicted to one drug or another. That was pretty fucking alarming, but what could he do about it? Couldn’t very well admit it to a doctor, could he? No way  _ that _ would end well.

Of course, it turned out to be pretty awkward trying to have sex with that cast on, so maybe he’d just try and deal with not being able to fuck the hot guy he was living with until the cast came off. Even with his arm in a sling, that’d have to be less awkward than in that cast. Hopefully Arthur would be okay with that. It’d be a pretty shitty reason to break up if he wasn’t.

Curt had almost fallen back to sleep by the time Arthur let out a contented little noise and shifted in bed. He rolled over, and then suddenly let out a yelp. “Is that really the time?!” He was out of bed and running for the bathroom before Curt could finish laughing.

“C’mon, calm down!” Curt called after him. “It’s Sunday, remember? You can’t do shit about the story today anyway.”

A deep groan emerged from the bathroom. “Shite. I forgot about that.”

“Just take it easy today.” Curt got up and headed into the bathroom himself.

“I can’t do that,” Arthur replied, shaking his head even as he washed his hands. “I ‘ave to give the article at least some editing before I take it in. Catch the worst mistakes, clean up sloppy grammar, all that.”

“That’s not really going to take all day, is it?”

“No,” Arthur admitted, with an adorably awkward smile, “but it’ll take a full day of fretting, no matter what else it takes.”

“You really take your work way the fuck too seriously.”

“Well, someone has to.” Arthur smiled pathetically. “And no one else takes me seriously, so I ‘ave to do enough for everyone.”

“That makes no sense.”

But Arthur wasn’t listening to reason (and Curt was disgusted to realize he was being the voice of reason) so nothing else got said about it until they were finishing up their breakfast. “Do you think you could ‘ave a look at the draft?” Arthur asked. “I don’t want to upset you, but—”

“I’m not a fragile flower to be worried about,” Curt said, doing his best not to glower. What the fuck, man? Bad enough he was having all these problems already without his own boyfriend treating him like a child!

“I didn’t mean that,” Arthur insisted, “only you’ve been very…well… _ different _ since the attack, and sometimes these things take time to really recover from…and…um…”

Curt sighed. “That’s not the reason.” He was  _ not _ some whimpering little brat having nightmares because something scary happened. Whatever was wrong with him, it wasn’t  _ that _ . He wasn’t crazy. He was just…it was probably the pain medications or something. He’d be fine in a few days, once they got out of his system. He had to be. “Look, just don’t worry about it, okay? I’ll read it over, but I don’t really know much about reporting and shit.”

“That’s all right. I just need another pair of eyes to look at it and spot the mistakes I can’t see. Especially any factual errors or gaps in logic.” Arthur smiled much too warmly. “I’ll print out a copy for you.”

Curt nodded, and Arthur left the room at a near run, leaving behind the remnants of his breakfast on the table. He came back to deal with it before Curt could make up his mind if  _ he _ was going to clean it up or not. “What happened to the print-out?” Curt asked.

“It’s printing now. It’s not an instant process.”

“Mmm.” Curt really knew nothing about computers. Except that they were much smaller than they used to be, back when NASA was bragging about having computers that only took up a single room. How had they gotten so small they could fit on a desk? Sure, the one Arthur had brought home had to be way less powerful than one of those huge NASA jobs, but it still felt all sci-fi and shit. Or maybe Curt was starting to spiral down into being ‘old.’ That was a terrifying thought, considering he wasn’t even 40 yet…

Curt settled down on the sofa, and Arthur brought in the article. It was printed on unpleasant-feeling paper with rows of holes down either side of it, and the text itself was clunky and much lighter than the text in a newspaper or book. Not so light that it couldn’t be read, but it wasn’t pleasant. Then again, the subject matter was so far from pleasant that it hardly mattered what the physical act of reading it was like.

Despite the various things Arthur had said to him during the research process, there was a lot about the incident that Curt hadn’t found out, so reading the article for himself was a real learning experience. If Arthur’s sources were all telling the truth, then that motherfucker had murdered a dozen innocent people and wounded dozens more—including Curt!—just because some chick had rejected him? What the fuck was  _ wrong _ with a man like that? And if he was so unhinged that everyone at every job he’d worked in the last year was scared of him, then…but that was the one thing Curt already knew; he’d been there when that old asshole had said there was no law against selling guns to lunatics. The man had a criminal record a mile long for rape and assault, and yet he’d had no trouble getting his hands on a machine gun. And even if  _ he _ went to jail for the rest of his life, the fucker who sold him the gun probably wouldn’t even be dragged into court, let alone sent up the river for enabling mass murder…

By the time he was done with the article, Curt was too steamed to do anything other than lower it.

“Is anything wrong with the story?” Arthur asked, his voice trembling.

Curt grimaced, shaking his head. “Only the stuff that’s supposed to be wrong with it.” Arthur just looked confused. “The subject matter, I mean.”

“Oh, yes. Fixing that is what the article’s hoping to achieve.”

Fat chance of  _ that _ happening, especially not in Reynolds’ America. “I hope it’ll help,” Curt said, handing the paper back. It wasn’t a lie: he did  _ hope _ it would help…he just  _ knew _ that it wouldn’t.

Arthur produced a red pen from somewhere—probably one of the ones Curt kept in the control booth for making corrections on sheet music—and started marking up the print-out Curt had just read and thought was fine as it was. Evidently he wasn’t a very good critic of news articles. Well, not like he had any experience with them, after all. He barely ever even read the paper, let alone news magazines.

Curt just sat there for about five minutes, wondering what the fuck he was supposed to do now. He was not exactly in the mood to read after that article, but if he turned on the television it would distract Arthur from his proofreading, and he couldn’t go into the game room and play a game, ‘cause he could still only use one hand. That didn’t leave a huge number of things to do. Didn’t really leave  _ anything _ , in fact.

With no particular avenues for goofing off available, Curt realized there wasn’t much for it but to work, too. So he headed into the sound booth and found the sheet music Brian had brought by the other day. With one thing and another, Curt still hadn’t even looked at it.

It still didn’t feel all that much like Brian’s old music, and the lyrics were a bit awkward and didn’t even particularly fit the music, but it was a lot better. It would probably only need one more draft before it was ready for him to start learning it. (Of course, Brian would keep fussing with it until the day it was recorded, if not a lot longer than that. His perfectionist brain had no concept of “finished.”)

Unfortunately, because the song still wasn’t ready, it hadn’t really filled much of Curt’s empty day. He knew he  _ ought  _ to start working on new songs of his own, but…he wasn’t sure he was in the right headspace to try writing lyrics, and he usually composed the music by strumming it out on the guitar, so  _ that _ was fucking off the table for the foreseeable future. Stepping into the control booth, Curt turned on some of the equipment, cuing up the backing tracks for one of the songs he was supposed to be performing as a duet with one of the other artists for the concert or album or whatever it was gonna end up being. After shutting the door to the sound booth, Curt started the recording playing and tried to sing his part like usual. At first, it was going fine. He got all the way through the second verse before he found himself flashing to his sudden problem getting it up. He’d barely managed to disperse the image of looking down at his own useless cock before he could hear gunshots within the drum beat.

Curt ripped off the headphones as fast as he could, and left the booth without even bothering to turn off the equipment. He needed a drink.  _ Now _ .

After downing half a can of beer, Curt went to see how Arthur was doing. He wasn’t feeling lonely. He just wanted to check on his boyfriend. That was only natural. It wasn’t a weakness…

Arthur had left off the paper copy, and was typing something into the computer again. “Now what are you doing?” Curt asked.

“Making the edits.”

“Ah.” Curt sighed. “Mind if I turn on some music?” The keyboard wasn’t much fun to listen to, but he really didn’t feel like being alone right now.

“Go ahead. Might help, actually.”

Unfortunately, the room didn’t have a record player—or even a tape deck—just a clock-radio. Curt toyed with the idea of going into the game room, turning on the jukebox and cranking up the volume, but that was probably a good way to piss off the downstairs neighbors if they happened not to have gone out of town this weekend. And while he couldn’t be evicted, they  _ could _ work to make his life even more of a living hell if he ticked them off too bad. So he just turned on the radio, jumping between stations until he found something halfway decent.

There wasn’t much else to do, though. He sat on the bed and watched Arthur’s back as he worked. But there was only so much staring at the back of someone’s head that Curt could take, and most of his actual back was hidden by the chair, so pretty soon Curt laid back on the bed, folding his good hand up under his head, and started examining the ceiling for cracks or for cobwebs the cleaners missed last time they were in.

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because Curt suddenly became aware that it was deathly quiet in the room: no more radio, and no more clicking keys. Opening his eyes to look around, Curt found Arthur had moved the chair over by the bed, and was still sitting in it, though he seemed to be asleep himself. According to the clock-radio beside the bed, it was almost one. Shit, he’d slept most of the morning. He was probably gonna have a hell of time falling asleep tonight.

Somehow, Curt managed to get back up off the bed without waking Arthur, and he slowly made his way out of the room and into the kitchen. There wasn’t jack shit to eat. Okay, no, actually there was a lot of food, but nothing that Curt could prepare one-handed other than toast. So he had no choice but to call out and have something delivered, right? Even Arthur couldn’t complain about that. As long as it wasn’t pizza or Chinese.

Fortunately, Curt had about ten thousand delivery menus in a drawer by the phone (or it felt like that many whenever he was looking for one particular one) so he was able to find some that were really exotic and definitely  _ not _ pizza. He was weighing his options between Thai and sushi when Arthur came into the kitchen.

“What…? What’re you doin’?” he asked, his voice still a little bleary. He must have really needed that sleep.

“I’m calling out for lunch. What do you want? I’ve got menus for everyplace you can think of here.”

Arthur sighed, sitting down at the table. “I’d kill for some of Gupta’s chips.”

“Who the fuck’s Gupta?” Other than an Indian, anyway.

“Ran a little food stall not far from my parents’ house,” Arthur said, with a pathetic little smile. “Best fish and chips in Lancashire.”

“Yeah? What was it like? I mean, just traditional fish and chips?”

Arthur shook his head. “He’d sprinkle a little curry powder into the oil as he was frying the chips. Just enough to give them a hint of the flavor. Did something special to the batter for the fish, too, but I don’t know what exactly.”

“I’m not sure I get what that’d taste like, but I’d love to try it.” Curry wasn’t exactly Curt’s favorite dish, but it was all right. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t eat, after all. “Anyway, how about traditional English-style fish and chips? There’s a place not far from here that delivers.” If he could find the menu…

“Really?”

“Yeah…” Curt started sorting through the menus again, discarding fistfuls of them back in the drawer as he checked that they weren’t the ones he wanted. “Ah, here it is!” He handed the menu to Arthur. “They’ve got all sorts of stuff. We can order whatever you want.”

“The King’s Beard?”

Curt laughed. “Yeah. Named after the owner’s husband.”

“Husband?”

“Right, like as in the owner’s a butch dyke, but married a man as a beard.”

“I doubt she’d want you to refer to her that way,” Arthur sighed.

“Well, that’s what she calls herself, so…”

“Even so.”

Curt shrugged. “Anyway, you wanna order something there or not?”

“Sure. It’s been years since I had a proper lager.”

Curt laughed. “How’d I know you’d say that? What’s so wrong with American beer?”

“It would take all afternoon to explain.”

“I’ve got the time.”

Arthur laughed, too. “Don’t tempt me, love. I might do it.”

“Just order first, or we’ll starve to death.”

For some reason, it seemed to Curt that the big smile on Arthur’s face as he reluctantly turned his attention to the menu was the most beautiful thing he had seen in years.


	17. Chapter 17

Though the article didn’t really feel ready for publication, Arthur didn’t think he could do much more for it without some feedback. He didn’t know quite what the editor would want, after all. So here he was, bright and early Monday morning, taking the print-out to the  _ Weekly News _ offices. (Thankfully, there had been some business to conduct, so Curt’s manager was at the flat, and Arthur had asked him to wait there until he was back, on the excuse that he was “worried” about Curt, without explaining why.)

The secretary at the front desk called over an intern to escort Arthur to the editor’s office, which was at the heart of a maze of offices on the eighth floor of Jeffrey Nathan’s massive office building. Allegedly, he only put the head offices of the periodicals most important to him in his own building, but no matter the reason, it made Arthur entirely nervous. The intern preceded Arthur into the office to explain who he was and why he was there, a process that took longer than Arthur would have expected.

When he was finally permitted to enter the room, he found that Merv Tyler, the editor of  _ Weekly News, _ was a balding older man—probably early sixties—with a paunch and a permanent scowl. Awards lined the walls of the office, along with several framed copies of the magazine. Tyler waited until the door was shut behind the intern before speaking.

“I will tell you right up front that I am not in the habit of accepting stories from people who are on the covers of tabloids,” he said. “No matter what Jeffrey Nathan says, I am  _ not _ going to publish your story if it’s shit.”

“The covers of tabloids?” Arthur repeated. He knew a few stories about Curt might have featured the rogue blurry shot of his face, but…

Tyler rooted through a stack of newspapers on his desk, selected one, and tossed it onto the other side of the desk. Picking it up, Arthur found it was a local tabloid, and his face was indeed right on the front page. It was one of those photographs Curt had mentioned earlier, randomly taken on the street as they were walking along. Looked like they had probably been on the way to the salon to get Curt’s hair washed. The headline promised “Gay Rocker and Boyfriend Caught in Public Indecency!” Alarmed, Arthur sat down without even asking first, and hastily turned to the article within. There he found a particularly short and trite account from their waiter at the steak place on Friday night, recounting opening the door of their private dining room and interrupting their kiss—which the waiter described as a “lewd and grotesque act.”

Arthur grimaced as he put the tabloid down again. “This is entirely exaggerated,” he said.

“That’s a given with a tabloid,” Tyler said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you have  _ become _ the news. You can’t report on it when you’re inside it.”

“Maybe so, maybe not,” Arthur said, shrugging. “Even without that, I was already inside this story, and I think it still qualifies as proper investigative journalism. Whether or not it’s any good…well, I’ll leave that up to you to decide.” With that, he handed over the envelope with his story in it.

Tyler looked sceptical, but accepted the envelope. “I’ll tell you one other thing, before I even see this. I wouldn’t stay on at this magazine if my politics entirely conflicted with my employer’s, but I am  _ not _ a rabid liberal like he is. If it weren’t for the censorship and martial law, I’d quite like President Reynolds.”

“Um…?” What was Arthur supposed to say to that? Was he even expected to respond?

Without waiting to see if Arthur would figure out something to say, Tyler opened the envelope and removed the print-out. He set promptly to reading it, devoting so much attention that he even ignored his telephone when it rang. After what felt like an eternity but couldn’t have been even ten minutes, Tyler lowered the print-out again, shaking his head. “Unfortunately,” he sighed, “it’s quite promising.”

“Promising?” Arthur repeated, deciding to overlook the fact that the statement had been described as ‘unfortunate.’

“It’s a good first draft, but it needs a lot of work. It’s too long, for starters, and there are places where you draw out the logic in too much detail; the reader would get bored and move on if that was left as it stands.” Tyler shook his head. “However, if your information is accurate, it’s a sensational story that will get a lot of attention and sell a lot of extra copies.” He laughed. “Even if some of the copies are only gun nuts buying them to burn them.”

“So you want the story, then.”

Tyler picked up a red pen off his desk. “I expect the revisions by the end of the day.” He paused, then looked up at Arthur. “How long is your commute to this office?”

“Depends if I miss the train. I was able to get here in about fifteen minutes.”

Tyler consulted his watch, then nodded. “That should give you enough time to get back, fix it up, and return here,” he said, as he started marking up the article.

***

Wednesday afternoon, Arthur came in and sat down on the sofa, with a satisfied smile on his face. “Something good happen?” Curt surmised, turning off the TV. There wasn’t anything good on, anyway.

“It’s finally finished,” Arthur told him.

“Wasn’t it already finished on Saturday?” It hadn’t needed any work that Curt had been able to see!

“Only the first draft. But this time, it’s really finished. I only ‘ave to turn it in, and it’ll be in next week’s issue.”

“That’s great. We should go out tonight and celebrate.” Curt would, of course, take any excuse to go out and get plastered, but this was actually a reason even someone like Arthur would accept.

“That sounds fantastic,” Arthur agreed, and they both went into the bedroom to get changed into something to wear that was suitable for going out clubbing. The celebratory atmosphere was pretty much fucked by taking the subway to get to the magazine’s head office, but that just meant they’d have to party even harder and get it back again. Pity Curt’s arm was still in that fucking cast, though. It’d be a lot easier to enjoy the evening if he could use both arms.

When they got to the magazine’s office building, Arthur led the way through a real rat’s nest full of scurrying people holding folders and clipboards and loose armfuls of paper, until they got to the door labeled as belonging to the editor. “I’ll just be a minute,” Arthur said, “but I think it’ll complicate things if you come in with me.”

“Yeah, I’ll wait here.” Not like Curt wanted to go in there. With all the petty little changes the guy had forced Arthur to make, Curt was expecting a less flashy version of Jerry Devine, and the flash had been the only part of Jerry that didn’t suck, so he was happier not seeing that in person.

Arthur knocked on the door, and waited for a “Come in,” before opening the door. It wasn’t open very long, but Curt still got a glimpse of a tubby bald guy on the other side before it shut again. Not really what he’d been expecting. “You actually brought him with you?” Curt heard the editor ask, even as the door was shutting.

Curt spent most of the time Arthur was inside fighting not to laugh.

Arthur soon emerged, though, and they began picking their way back towards the elevator. “Glad that’s over with,” Arthur said, as they got started.

“Are you gonna be writing for this magazine a lot?”

“I don’t know. Mr. Nathan said he liked to move his freelancers around between all the magazines he owns,” Arthur replied, with a shrug.

Curt waited until they were in the elevator to ask the question that was suddenly eating at him. “Just how many magazines  _ does _ he own?”

“About forty, I think; I’ve never counted. Too many for one man, whatever the number is.”

“Is he up to something?” That kind of monopoly usually spelled out bad things.

“I don’t know. He seemed fairly harmless when I spoke to him, but it could ‘ave been an act.” Arthur shrugged. “As long as he’s paying me and he doesn’t do anything obviously contrary to my personal sense of right and wrong, I don’t think I’ll be lookin’ any deeper into his motives.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Curt certainly didn’t go poking around in the politics of the people who owned the label. Partially because he knew he wouldn’t like what he found. But also because he also knew all the other labels would be the same way.

They didn’t really say much else until they’d left the building. “So, it’s still only mid-afternoon,” Arthur commented. “What do you want to do now? The clubs won’t even open for hours.”

“Yeah…uh…hmm.” Curt frowned. “Y’wanna go buy something fun for the game room?” he suggested. “We could get another pinball machine, or another arcade cabinet.” The two he had were both pretty old, after all.

“Bloody hell. If you want to make an impulse purchase of something utterly needless, could it please be something that doesn’t cost dozens of times my monthly salary?”

Curt laughed. “They’re not  _ that _ expensive.” Unless Arthur was paid a lot less than Curt would have thought was the bare minimum to live on in this city. “But, yeah, we could just go to a toy shop and look at board games. Oh, no, I know—let’s go find a sex shop and see if we can find some more sexy board games.”

Arthur sighed. “That’s not…really….”

“Not really what?”

“I don’t even know what I’m trying to say,” Arthur admitted, with a weak smile. “I suppose it feels a little…lacking in grandeur after what I—we’ve just accomplished.”

“Grandeur?” Curt repeated. “I don’t wanna go to a fucking art museum, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, that’s certainly not what I had in mind.” Arthur paused, looking concerned. “I’m not sure what I  _ did _ ‘ave in mind, really.”

“Just not dirty board games.”

“Yeah.” Arthur paused a minute. “We could go to a bookstore or a video store,” he suggested. “No, not a dirty video store,” he added, almost immediately.

Curt sighed. “That’s no fun.” He shook his head, trying to think about what was within walking distance of where they were. “Hey, you know, there’s a big record shop not far from here. Wanna go check out what they’ve got? They’ve got a lot of rare used records. We might find something great.”

“Curt, if you go into to a record shop right now, it’s likely to turn into an impromptu autograph session.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Curt asked, slipping his good arm around Arthur’s shoulders.

Arthur laughed. “All right, then, if that’s what you want. Let’s go.” He put his arm around Curt’s waist, and they started off towards the record shop.

***

The issue of  _ Weekly News _ with Arthur’s article in it came out on Monday, 27 August. Based on the age of the story—it had been close to a month since the shooting—and the editor’s general attitude towards it, Arthur expected it to be buried in the back, with nary a hint on the cover that it existed. Instead, it was the cover story. The front cover was plastered with Rick Johnson’s mug shot, superimposed over a photograph of the concert grounds in Central Park, taken at the beginning of Curt’s set. The text below the image promised “Rock Concert Killer’s True Motives Exposed!” A rather lurid headline—sounded like it belonged in a cheap tabloid—but at least it was not inaccurate.

The layout department had spared nothing in getting the article arranged, and photographers had been dispatched to countless locations to bolster the article with imagery, including a shot of the prison where Johnson was currently being held, both of the places he had lived in the last year, and a photo of his current landlord. They even managed to convince Rachel Hellas to allow them to photograph her. One of their photographers was even brave enough to go to New Jersey and photograph the gun shop, going so far as to use a telephoto lens to get a picture of the shopkeep through the front window. (Arthur was glad the photographer hadn’t risked going inside!)

The reprint of his final work for the  _ Herald _ , however, was not so carefully arrayed. In fact, it was in rather small print and stuck at the back of the magazine, surrounded by cheap advertisements for sketchy products that promised things like increased popularity with the opposite sex, and renewed virility. It was just a good thing Curt hadn’t seen any of the latter type of advertisements!

Not, of course, that Curt had ever admitted—beyond the strong hints before they made love after the first draft of the article was finished—that he had been suffering any impotency issues, but Arthur had finally figured out that he had been, and that they had been the real reason they hadn’t been making love sooner. (Though without those hints, he probably still wouldn’t have gotten it.) Curt seemed to view the problem as solved, but it clearly wasn’t entirely resolved: there had been several incidents since then where Curt had failed to achieve an erection. Still, two or three times over a week and a half was nothing compared to failure every time, so he was definitely on the mend. Arthur had a feeling Curt would blame his medication if he was willing to talk about it (which was not impossible, given the timing of his recovery), but Arthur’s own theory was that it was part of the same issue that had made Curt afraid to be alone, some kind of psychological trauma caused by the shooting. If he was on the mend now, it was probably the relief of seeing all the evidence Arthur had gathered proving that Johnson really hadn’t been targeting that audience because of Curt, that he would have done the same thing no matter who had been on the stage.

Arthur didn’t perceive much reaction to the story on Monday, but on Tuesday, the evening news—the national evening news, at that!—ran a “man on the street” response to it, interviewing both regular passersby (in New York only), and various experts and famous persons. The psychologists and criminologists they spoke to all agreed that the motive Arthur had discovered behind Johnson’s crimes was far more consistent with the way the criminal mind worked than the homophobic motive claimed by the note allegedly found in his flat. Most of the people on the street who had read the article (only one who hadn’t was included, but Arthur was sure most of the people they had actually stopped wouldn’t have read it) actually agreed that even more important than seeing Johnson punished was seeing new laws that would have prevented a man like him from getting his hands on that kind of weapon in the first place. But then they got to the celebrities…

…culminating with Tommy Stone. “Mr. Stone, does this new light on the case change your mind about anything?” the interviewer asked. “Your decision to support Curt Wild in the wake of this attack has put a rift between yourself and the President’s Committee for Cultural Renewal. Now that you know the attack was nothing to do with Wild, will you be returning to the fold?”

“I don’t break promises so lightly as that,” Tommy replied, looking disappointed. “The fact is, I agree with the call to arms sent out from England. An attack on one of us is an attack on us all, and an attack on our audience is a declaration of war. The fact that the audience was the real target rather than Curt only makes the man’s crime against rock that much more egregious. Curt Wild is just one man. Our audience is the whole world. As charming as one man can be, he pales to insignificance before the whole world. We, as stars, often forget that as our egos are inflated by the adulation of the masses, but this makes an excellent opportunity to remind ourselves of our position as servants of the public.”

“Then are you going to be withdrawing your support from the Committee?”

“I have no desire to do so. President Reynolds has done great work for this country, and the Committee for Cultural Renewal has played a large role in that. More personally, it has aided my career considerably. I should like to keep on working with them. That being said, if I must choose between the rock community and the political one…I must choose my own community. Though my particular oeuvre within rock is entirely dissimilar to Curt’s, we are still both part of the larger rock and roll community. We both have gold records hanging on our walls. We both still dream—consciously or unconsciously—of spots reserved for us in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I cannot turn my back on that for the support of a mere politician. No matter what people say about the President of the United States being the ‘Most Powerful Man in the World,’ it’s still a temporary job. At most, he has four more years in that office, and then he’s permanently unemployed. If I maintain the quality of my music and respond appropriately to the changes of the times, I can continue in my own career for the rest of my life—and my albums can continue to sell for all time, if the people don’t tire of them. No mere politician can say that. In my view, a rock star has far more power than any politician, and must be treated accordingly.”

“That won’t win him any favours in the White House,” Arthur chuckled.

“Bet Reynolds will have another temper tantrum when he hears it,” Curt agreed.

“No doubt.” Arthur leaned back on the sofa. “I’m just glad I won’t ‘ave to be the one covering it.”

Curt turned off the television, and turned to look at Arthur. “Hey, so…how long do you go between stories?”

“No idea,” Arthur admitted. “This is new to me. At the ‘ _ Erald _ , we’d always be workin’ on a story, and I’m sure it’s the same for  _ Weekly News _ staff writers. But as a freelance…it sounds like until Mr. Nathan assigns me a story for one of his magazines, I’m free to work on my own ideas at my own pace, or do nothing at all.”

“So you’re gonna have all the time in the world when my cast comes off in a few days, right? To help me celebrate being healed.”

Arthur laughed. “Of course, love.” He leaned in and gave Curt a brief kiss. “We could ‘ave a practice celebration now, if you’d like.”

“I love a good practice session,” Curt agreed, grinning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally, I wouldn't advertise (as it were) an upcoming fic, but the second fic in this series (the only other one I've actually written so far, though I have plans for several more) is a crossover with one of my other favorite movies, "Hail, Caesar!" And since that's currently streaming on Netflix, I thought I should mention it now, in case anyone hasn't seen it but might want to read the next of these fics. (Which, I promise, does not deal with mass shootings, trauma or impotency. Aside from the occasional reference back to this fic.) While the crossover shouldn't be too hard to follow without having seen "Hail, Caesar!", it's definitely going to work better if you *have* seen it, especially since the fic contains massive spoilers. (Plus, it's a fantastic movie. Funnier the more you know about Hollywood in the '50s, of course, but even if you don't know much, it should stand on its own. Tons of big name stars giving great performances, and Michael Gambon putting more into a narration gig that some people put into starring roles. (Seriously, it'd be worth watching just to hear his narrator even if the rest of the movie wasn't brilliant. But the rest of the movie *is* brilliant.))


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